After performing an in-place upgrade on a Windows machine, you will find a WINDOWS.OLD folder in the root of C:. This folder will have a backup of your old program files, appdata and Windows folder… just in case you need to revert back or recover something that might have been lost during the upgrade. When you try to delete it though you are told you don’t have permissions. Just a small point here, it is generally not recommended to do in-place upgrades on servers. In fact there are some products (e.g. Exchange, ConfigMgr) that explicitly state they do not support upgrading the Operating System. There is of course a difference between “what works” and “what is supported”, but we do suggest where possible you do a clean Server install and migrate your application to the new server. Anyway, let’s assume you’ve understand all the risks and have done a successful in-place upgrade, you now find the old WINDOWS.OLD folder of several GB in size sitting there. If all is well, then you might as well just delete it.

SOLUTION

On Desktop OS version, you can just use the disk cleanup tool to remove it, but that is not available (by default) on Servers, so there are a couple of approaches.

Command line tools to take ownership and delete the folder. Make sure to “run as administrator”

How can I delete the windows.old from an upgraded Windows Server?

For a client OS that’s upgraded, the Disk Cleanup utility can be used to delete the very large windows.old folder containing the old OS. This isn’t available on a server OS without installing the Desktop Experience feature.

To delete, it is necessary to take ownership of the folder, give administrators full control, then delete. This can be done with the commands below:

•  takeown /F c:\Windows.old\* /R /A /D Y
•  cacls c:\Windows.old\*.* /T /grant administrators:F
•  rmdir /S /Q c:\Windows.old

Or you can add the “Desktop” features to provide the Disk Cleanup tool:

Step By Step Guide to Enabling “Disk Cleanup Utility”

1. Open The Roles and Features Wizard

To open the roes and feauture wizard. Lauch the “server manager” by pressing the Windows key

and clicking on the server manage please see Screenshot as shown.

Personally, the command line option is less messy and saves having to add features to your server that don’t really need to be there.

2. Click on Add role and Feature

Click on add role and feture to launch the add role and feature wizard.

3.  Choose installation Type

Choose rolebase or feature based installation to install to local machine.

4. Click Next all the way to features

Click “next” all the way to features. Locate “User Interface and Infrastructure”. Click on “Desktop Experience”

and install additional required feature.

5.  Proceed with the installation and Reboot

Make it sure that you reboot the system

6.  Verify that the Utility is indeed installed

Ready to run diskcleanup. See screen shot below.

Disk Cleanup in Action

Below is a sample snapshot of disk cleanup in action.

Recent changes by Microsoft to the Windows 10 support schedule underline why Windows 10 Pro is an ill fit for most companies.

Windows 10 Pro is a dead end for enterprises, a prominent Gartner analyst has argued.

“[We] predict that Microsoft will continue positioning Windows [10] Pro as a release that is not appropriate for enterprises by reducing … support and limiting access to enterprise management features,” Stephen Kleynhans, a research vice president at Gartner and one of the research firm’s resident Windows experts, said in a report he co-authored.

Microsoft’s Windows 10 Pro occupies the middle ground between the consumer-grade Home and the corporate-level Enterprise in features, functionality and price. Because Enterprise versions of Windows have never been available to computer makers, Pro – sometimes, as in Windows 7, tagged Professional instead – has been the most popular pre-installed OS on new business PCs. (Corporations typically re-image new personal computers with Enterprise upon receipt of the devices.)

But although Pro or Professional has a long history in business settings, Microsoft has made numerous decisions in its Windows 10 migration campaign to separate Pro and Enterprise even more, pushing them apart. In Kleynhans’ view, the gap has become unbridgeable.

The last straw was Microsoft’s on-the-fly changes to Windows 10 support.

Last year, the Redmond, Wash. developer announced a six-month support extension for Windows 10 1511, the November 2015 feature upgrade, “to help some early enterprise adopters that are still finishing their transition to Windows as a service.” In February, Microsoft added versions 1609, 1703 and 1709 – released in mid-2016, and in April and October of 2017, respectively – to the extended support list, giving each 24 months of support, not the usual 18.

“Some customers have requested an extension to the standard 18 months of support for Windows 10 releases,” a Microsoft executive said at the time.

There was a catch: Only Windows 10 Enterprise (and Windows 10 Education, a similar version for public and private school districts and universities) qualified for the extra six months of support. Users running Windows 10 Pro were still required to upgrade to a successor SKU (stock-keeping unit) within 18 months to continue receiving security patches and other bug fixes.

Windows 10 Enterprise 1709, for example, and its free “supplemental servicing,” will exhaust support in October 2019. But Windows 10 Pro 1709 runs out of support on April 9, 2019.

“The one thing that really surprised me about the added support,” said Kleynhans in an interview, “was the fact that it didn’t apply to Pro. I think that this telegraphed the fact that, for businesses, Pro is being dead-ended.”

Even though the six-month support extension ended with the 1803 feature upgrade, the one that began reaching some users late last month, in the report Kleynhans co-wrote with Gartner colleague Michael Silver, the duo made clear that they believe Pro is viewed by Microsoft as a second-class citizen.

“Customers currently using Windows 10 Pro should continue to monitor Microsoft’s life cycle announcements because they will eventually need to budget for Windows [10] Enterprise as Windows [10] Pro becomes more ‘pro-sumer’ and small-business oriented,” they wrote in a six-item list of recommendations.

Another component of Microsoft’s current Windows 10 support strategy, something the company has labeled “paid supplemental servicing,” was also out of bounds for those running Windows 10 Pro. The extra support, which Microsoft will sell at an undisclosed price, is available only to Enterprise and Education customers.

Paid supplemental servicing adds 12 months to the 18 months provided free of charge.

“The extensions and paid support option only apply to the Enterprise and Education SKUs,” Kleynhans and Silver said in their report, “Plan and Budget for Short Windows and Office Support Cycles Based on Microsoft’s February 2018 Announcements,” which was published by Gartner last month. “Customers using Windows 10 Pro will still see support end after 18 months. In this way, Microsoft is further reinforcing that it expects enterprise customers to move to the Enterprise edition of Windows 10.”

Enhanced anti-spoofing safeguards are rolling out for Office 365.

Microsoft services like OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, and Microsoft Teams are closely guarded by ATP (Advanced Threat Protection). Besides, there are numerous feature updates available in Office 365 threat protection service to address the evolution and advances in the threat landscape. The addition of enhanced Anti-Spoofing capability in Office ATP for protecting against spoofed emails from external domains further strengthens this security framework.

Anti-spoofing in Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection

The newest anti-spoof features help protect organizations from external domain spoof.  Office 365 recognizes emails from external domains having proper SPF, DMARC, and DKIM authentication settings as legitimate/authentic and therefore allow them to pass authentication, uninterrupted.

This normal process is however challenged when external domains do not have these settings properly configured. Without enforcement of these settings, domains show a high likelihood of being manipulated and maliciously spoofed, leaving customers vulnerable to phishing or spam attacks. The new external domain anti-spoofing capabilities help detect and block emails from external domains that do not have the following features,

1. Correct authentication configuration
2. An email infrastructure source with an unknown history

How does it work?

A newly enhanced filter in ATP first checks if the email from external domains, passes SPF, DKIM, and DMARC test.  If not, the filter thoroughly checks for historical sending patterns of that domain and associated infrastructure. If any suspicious behavior is noted, ATP assumes the sender does not bear a good reputation and as such, proceeds to junk the message.

Also, a feature worth noticing about Anti-spoofing – The filter constantly evolves and enhances itself based on mail flow patterns it observes.  ATP subscribers can access the spoof intelligence report in their Antispam Policy and take necessary actions if required.

What Is EU GDPR? 

The EU GDPR is a law designed to protect and empower residents of the EU by guiding business usage of personal data. In essence, it is reshaping the way corporations handle personal data by controlling its collection, use, and storage. It will replace the regulations and frameworks of the existing 20-year-old directive (95/46/EC).

Who Is the GDPR Protecting and Empowering? 

The data subject: This is any individual that can be directly or indirectly identified or uniquely singled out in a group of individuals, from any stored data.

What Is the GDPR Protecting? 

Personal data: This is any information relating to an individual, whether in reference to their private, professional, or public life. It includes things like names, photos, email addresses, location data, online identifiers, a person’s bank details, posts on social networking websites, medical information, work performance details, subscriptions, purchases, tax numbers, education or competencies, locations, usernames and passwords, hobbies, habits, lifestyles, or a person’s computer’s IP address.

Who Is the GDPR Regulating? 

The data controller: This is the person who, alone or jointly with others, determines the purposes for, and means of, processing personal data. A data controller is not responsible for the act of processing (this falls to the data processor); they can be defined as the entity that determines motivation, condition, and means of processing.

Generally, the role of the controller is derived from the organization’s functional relation with the individual. That is, a business is the controller for the customer data it processes in relation to its sales, and an employer is the controller for the employee data they process in connection with the employment relationship.

Who Else Is the GDPR Regulating? 

Data processors: This is the person who processes personal data on behalf of the controller. Typical processors are IT service providers (including hosting providers) and payroll administrators. The processor is required to process the personal data in accordance with the controller’s instructions and take adequate measures to protect the personal data. The GDPR does not allow data processors to use the personal data for other purposes beyond providing the services requested by the controller.

What Does the GDPR Consider “Processing?” 

Processing refers to any operation or set of operations performed upon personal data, whether or not by automatic means—such as collection, recording, organization, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, blocking, erasure, or destruction. Processing must be fair and lawful, although transparency is significantly strengthened. The processor may not use the personal data for their own purposes.

What Rights Do the Data Subjects Have? 

Under the GDPR, data subjects can request the following:

• To be informed about the data processing
• To consent to the processing of their personal data (opt in) or object to the processing of their personal data (opt out)
• To obtain their personal data in a structured and commonly used format in order to transfer that data, in certain circumstances, to another controller (data portability)
• To not be subject to fully automated data processing or profiling
• To know what data is processed (right of access)
• To correct where any data is incorrect
• To have data erased under certain circumstances, for example, where the retention period has lapsed or where consent for the processing has been withdrawn (referred to commonly as the “right to be forgotten”) and to register a complaint with the supervisory authority

Other Key Elements to Consider in Preparing for GDPR

We’re not done yet. There are four more important elements to consider with GDPR as you become ready.

1) Data Breach Notification

For controllers, GDPR requires that breach notice must be provided, where feasible, within 72 hours of becoming aware of a breach; processors need to provide notice to controllers without undue delay. Any data breaches must be documented.

2) Data Minimization

This requires the level and type of data being processed to be limited to the minimum amount of data necessary. This requires you to ensure that the purpose in which the data is agreed and the purpose in which the data was collected are materially similar. The processors should ensure that individuals’ privacy is considered at the outset of each new processing, product, service, or application, and only minimum amounts of data are processed for the specific purposes collected and processed.

3) Data Pseudonymization

The GDPR defines pseudonymization as “the processing of personal data in such a way that the data can no longer be attributed to a specific data subject without the use of additional information.” To pseudonymize data, the “additional information” must be “kept separately and subject to technical and organizational measures to ensure non-attribution to an identified or identifiable person.” In other words, it is a strategy designed to enhance protection and privacy for applicable identifying data.

Although similar, anonymization and pseudonymization are two distinct techniques that permit data controllers and processors to use de-identified data. The difference between the two techniques rests on whether the data can be re-identified.

4) Fair Processing of Personal Data

This requires the processing of personal data to be fair and lawful. Generally, only the level and type of data collected should be limited to the minimum amount of data necessary (see data minimization above). There are a number of methods in which the data may be processed, including: express consent (which may be withdrawn at any time), legitimate interest basis (the subject of which legitimacy may be challenged by the data subject), honoring obligations under the agreement with the data subject, or any other legal basis that may apply.

What We Can Do to Help

We know this information can be overwhelming, but taking the proper steps now will save you headaches later. SolarWinds provides products that can help you with getting ready. Our Risk Intelligence software is one of them, providing you with hard data on:

• A business’ quantified financial risk
• Personally identifiable information (PII)
• Protected health information
• Payment information located in storage
• Access permissions for sensitive data

Search your ‘data at rest’ for risk areas and start the data mapping you need to get ready for GDPR.

Admins can send simulated phishing and attack emails to find security and training weaknesses.

A few weeks ago, Microsoft released a public preview for Attack Simulator for Office 365 Threat Intelligence. On April 17th Microsoft announced that Attack Simulator is now generally available. Attack Simulator for Office 365 Threat Intelligence is available to all Office 365 E5 or Office 365 Threat Intelligence customers.

With Attack Simulator, customers can launch simulated attacks on their end users, determine how end users behave in the event of an attack, and update policies and ensure that appropriate security tools are in place to protect the organization from threats.  The GA of Attack Simulator adds a new HTML editor so realistic looking HTML emails can be sent in simulations of spear-phishing.  Also, two spear-phishing templates are available for immediate use in the spear phishing simulation.

Attack Simulator includes the three attack scenarios from our public preview.

Display Name Spear Phishing Attack: Phishing is the generic term for socially engineered attacks designed to harvest credentials or personally identifiable information (PII). Spear phishing is a subset of this phishing and is more targeted, often aimed at a specific group, individual, or organization.  These attacks are customized and tend to leverage a sender name that generates trust with the recipient.

Password Spray Attack: To prevent bad actors from constantly guessing the passwords of user accounts, often there are account lockout policies.  For example, an account will lockout after a certain number of bad passwords are guessed for a user.  However, if you were to take a single password and try it against every single account in an organization, it would not trigger any lockouts.  The password spray attack leverages commonly used passwords and targets many accounts in an organization with the hope that one of the account holder uses a common password that allows a hacker to enter the account and take control of it.  From this compromised account, a hacker can launch more attacks by assuming the identity of account holder.

Brute Force Password Attack: This type of attack consists of a hacker trying many passwords or passphrases with the hope of eventually guessing correctly. The attacker systematically checks all possible passwords and passphrases until the correct one is found.

This video demonstrates how Attack Simulator can help organizations educate users to become more secure from cyber threats.  With Attack Simulator, admins can train all their end users, and especially those who are attacked most often.  This proactive training is a powerful way to ensure that your organization can prevent the impact from advanced threats.  Over the coming months, more threat simulations will be added to Attack Simulator so organizations can simulate the most prevalent threat types from the modern threat landscape.

Experience the benefits of Attack Simulator for Office 365 Threat Intelligence by beginning an Office 365 E5 trial today.  Also, learn more about how Microsoft leverages threat intelligence and the value of threat intelligence.

Manual Setup

The 10 best features you won’t be able to live without

I realized handing over my entire life to one platform had its downsides.

I deleted Google from my life, and I can show you how to do it, too.

After being a devoted Googler for many years, I realized putting all my data on one platform had its downsides. A couple of factors in particular drove me to make a clean break.

Deleting Google for privacy and security

The appeal of escaping Google comes down to privacy. Google collects an alarming amount of data about you. It’s safe to say that if you’re not a paying customer then you’re the product being sold, and that’s Google’s business model.

Security goes hand-in-hand with that. I’m sure Google’s servers are closely guarded, but I still didn’t want all my data to be concentrated in one place.

To Google’s credit, the company gives you tools to opt out of the give-us-your-private-data-for-our-services game altogether. We cover the basics in these two articles:

• How to download your Google data so you can see what’s being recorded.
• How to delete your Google data to protect yourself.

Deleting Google for social impact

Another reason to get rid of Google is make your choice as a consumer for a healthier, more responsible media. As a working journalist, I’m acutely aware that Google and Facebook jointly dominate the media distribution and discovery landscape. With no strong competitors to Google Search in particular, Google’s algorithms hold unprecedented sway over the discourse in our society.

The importance of search discovery means that publishers and journalists must write stories to match the queries typed in by readers. That means coverage is guided by readers’ preconceived notions about a news event, not by objective reporting. That’s a deeply disturbing state of affairs for any democratic society.

Google outwardly seems as dedicated to responsible stewardship as one could hope, but it’s still concerning enough to merit supporting alternatives and competitors.

How my Google-free experiment started

When I decided to drop Google, I had just left a full-time job at a company that used Google mail and other apps. I stopped using all Google products while I freelanced. Note: If you’re an Android user, this is basically a no-go. Fortunately, I use a combination of Windows PCs, Macs, and iOS devices, so I wasn’t trapped.

Everyone uses Google differently, but I focused on forgoing the services that are core to the experience: Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar, Maps, and Search.

Dropping Gmail was easier than expected. I tried Yahoo! Mail, but there were too many ads for my taste. The web interface for Apple Mail at icloud.com was just adequate. I found Microsoft’s overhauled Outlook web interface (and truly excellent mobile app) was the best alternative.

Instead of Docs, I tried Office 365 and iWork for iCloud. I liked them both better than Docs because I prefer native apps to web apps, and because I think both have more elegant designs—especially iCloud. Apple’s iWork for iCloud is similar to Docs in that it’s online-only, and designed for collaboration. It also has a mobile app. Office 365 will be pretty familiar to anyone who’s worked with Office’s desktop versions.

It was also pretty easy to kick Drive to the curb. Cloud storage competitors abound. I always preferred Dropbox to Drive anyway because I find that its OS X and Windows apps are better-integrated into the OS’s normal file browsing experience. Google Drive feels like it’s meant to be a place to store documents and back up files, not seamlessly augment your local storage—even though it does that in some ways.

Google Calendar has plenty of competition. This is a more personal choice, and people can get very attached—consider the furor when Microsoft shuttered Sunrise Calendar. On the other hand, it inspired us to find third-party alternative calendars, which could also replace Google Calendar.

What didn’t go well

I couldn’t quit everything Google offered so easily. Google Maps alternatives were a challenge. Your best bets are Waze or Apple Maps, but let’s be honest—they have nothing on Google Maps. Unlike Apple Maps, Waze has a web app, and powerful community-sourced data is its biggest selling point. But guess what? Google uses Waze’s data in Maps! So rather than gaining that feature, you’re just losing all the stuff Maps has that Waze doesn’t.

Google Search rules for a reason. The only two decent alternatives I found were Bing and DuckDuckGo.

Bing is a strong competitor. Some features, like video search, are even better than what Google offers. But Bing’s algorithm and the semantic search show more cracks than Google’s do.

DuckDuckGo isn’t as full-featured, but it records no user data—that’s the primary selling point of the platform. Both search options were passable, but Google has nailed semantic search with a precision that no one else can touch.

Back in Google’s grasp

I lived Google-free for five months, compromises and all. Then I was hired at a new job that required me to use Google. I considered the experiment a success, to the point that I was dismayed to abandon it at the new gig.

Google has us in its grasp for good reason. Looking back at my life without it, I can honestly say some alternatives couldn’t compare. Your mileage may vary based on which services you value most. If you decide to delete Google from your life, too, let us know how it goes on our Facebook page.

Have questions?

Get answers from Microsofts Cloud Solutions Partner!
Call us at: 856-745-9990 or visit: https://southjerseytechies.net/

South Jersey Techies, LL C is a full Managed Web and Technology Services Company providing IT Services, Website Design Services, Server Support, Network Consulting, Internet Phones, Cloud Solutions Provider and much more. Contact for More Information.

To read this article in its entirety click here.

If you use Wi-Fi on your iOS device, get this security update

The tech giant says there is a new cyber threat, but has taken steps to thwart the attack.  According to the reports, “Apple has now issued a critical security patch for all iOS devices and for Mac computers against a potential hack that could come remotely via Wi-Fi.”

The virus is being considered a potentially serious threat, so the company is urging users to install the updates to protect their devices.

The latest cyber threat is also a risk to Android device users, but Google has taken steps as well to block the virus.

“The vulnerability also has the potential to attack Android devices, but Google issued its own security patch earlier this month.”

Have questions?

Get answers from Microsofts Cloud Solutions Partner!
Call us at: 856-745-9990 or visit: https://southjerseytechies.net/

South Jersey Techies, LL C is a full Managed Web and Technology Services Company providing IT Services, Website Design Services, Server Support, Network Consulting, Internet Phones, Cloud Solutions Provider and much more. Contact for More Information.

To read this article in its entirety click here.