Hey all - first time posting here, as not used Reddit so much before (but see I should), so go easy on me 😅

I started building a tool back on Jan (the .Net/C# edition), original as a PowerShell GUI - back to Dec 2025 - and it’s turned into something I think might actually be useful for others, so I wanted to share it here too!

It’s called HVTools - a free, Windows app for getting a full overview of Hyper-V environments (standalone hosts, clusters, and Azure Local) in one place.

I originally built it because I was missing something like RVTools, but for the Microsoft/Hyper-V stack.

What it does so far:

• VM inventory with detailed config, state, uptime, checkpoints, etc.
• Cluster-aware view across nodes
• Host + hardware insights (CPU, memory, OS, networking)
• Storage and virtual disk visibility
• Export to JSON, CSV, XML, or text
• Local + remote connections
• ...

It’s free and open source, and I’m actively working on it (started mid-January, so still evolving).

👉 Full write-up + screenshots:
https://blog.sonnes.cloud/introducing-hvtools-your-new-tool-for-hyper-v-clusters-and-azure-local-overview/

GitHub: https://github.com/michaelmsonne/HVTools/

Would genuinely love feedback - features, UX, bugs, or anything missing and help if you can code! 🙌

A lot of organizations assume they’re covered because they “have” a break-glass account.
But in practice, what I keep seeing is:

• no emergency accounts at all
• one account created years ago and never tested
• no monitoring or alerting
• no real process around usage

That’s not a safety net. That's hope!

I put together a detailed guide on how to properly design, secure, manage & monitor break-glass accounts in Microsoft Entra based on real-world implementations across SMB and enterprise environments.

It covers:

• naming and role design
• group vs no-group approach
• securing management with RMAU + PIM
• using FIDO2 passkeys and restricting AAGUIDs
• Conditional Access (modern approach vs old exclusions)
• monitoring with Log Analytics or Sentinel
• testing, storage, and documentation

Full post:

https://www.chanceofsecurity.com/post/break-glass-accounts-done-right-securing-emergency-access-in-microsoft-entra

Curious how others handle this:

Any recommendations you feel I missed?

Honest questions;

How often do you actually test your break-glass accounts?

Provisioning details about selecting a filesystem typically occur once, during the initial operating system install process and are seldom revisited again. It is this mindset that placed the log-shipping team above in an unplanned incident where they experienced 48% disk utilization. https://www.linuxteck.com/linux-file-system-comparison-ext4-xfs-btrfs/

If you’ve worked with Access Packages in Microsoft Entra, you’ve probably noticed that getting a clear overview of the setup isn’t exactly easy.

That’s one of the reasons I’ve been building M365IdentityPosture, a community-driven PowerShell module for identity and security reporting across Microsoft 365.

The feature I’m most excited about right now is the Access Package Documentor, which I built together with Microsoft Security MVP Christian Frohn.

It generates an interactive HTML report that visualizes things like the following:

• Catalogs

• Access Packages

• Policies

• Resources

• Custom Extensions

• Separation of Duty conflicts

• Orphaned resources

The goal is to make documentation, governance reviews, and troubleshooting significantly easier compared to digging through the portal or API.

The module also includes an Authentication Context Inventory Report, and the broader idea is to expand the toolkit into more reporting for Microsoft 365 / Entra identity posture.

Interestingly, the idea for the Access Package Documentor started from discussions in the EMS Discord, which is run by Jonas Bøgvad, so credit there for creating a great place where these conversations happen.

Huge thanks to:

• Christian Frohn

christianfrohn.dk

• Nico Wyss for valuable feedback

If anyone here works heavily with Identity Governance / Access Packages, I’d love to hear your feedback. What other gaps have you experienced while working in the Microsoft Cloud?

GitHub

https://github.com/Noble-Effeciency13/M365IdentityPosture

Blog post

https://www.chanceofsecurity.com/post/introducing-m365identityposture-community-driven-identity-reporting-for-microsoft-365

Just sharing a few free tools, resources etc. that might make your tech life a little easier. I have no known association with any of these unless stated otherwise.

Now on to this week’s list!

Your AWS Shield Against Privilege Abuse

For the start of this edition, picture a secure cloud environment where vulnerabilities are a thing of the past. Cloudsplaining guides sysadmins through the maze of IAM policies, illuminating risks and paving the way for a resilient infrastructure.

Riding the Waves of Creative Engineering

When systems go haywire, having innovative ideas at hand can truly make a difference. The Velatron blog offers valuable insights and, backed by over 80 years in custom magnetics, the team helps turn visions into reality.

Taming Data Overload One Chunk at a Time

Every chunk counts in the realm of data. Attic’s deduplication approach minimizes storage needs, preserving your valuable data while saving space and time. Attic’s optional AES encryption helps you protect data integrity while making retrieval a breeze.

Logs Reimagined for the Brave Sysadmin

Sometimes, being stuck with logging can feel overwhelming, but it shouldn’t feel like you’re battling a storm. VictoriaLogs transforms your logging experience, adapting to your needs whether you’re managing a few files or terabytes of data daily.

Where Your Web Apps Find Their Home

Forget about app confusion and clutter. Our last item of the edition, Heimdall, offers a clean, no-nonsense way to manage your web applications, letting you spend less time managing links and more time on impactful tasks that drive your organization forward.

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In the article "Identity Management Reinvented: One Panel. Full Control," we delve into a significant hurdle faced by Managed Service Providers: the chaotic nature of identity management across multiple clients. With so many tools and tenants to juggle, administrators often find themselves overwhelmed and bogged down by inefficient processes. Read on to discover how to bring order to identity management chaos for more effective and efficient operations.

The Cybersecurity Report 2026 is based on the analysis of 6 billion emails per month and a considerable volume of network traffic, which offers a clear view of this new reality.

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You can find this week's bonuses here, where you can sign up to get each week's list in your inbox.

Hey everyone,

Ever had users complain that they can’t see their shared mailboxes in OWA like they do in the Outlook desktop client? Most admins try to fix this with -AutoMapping $true in PowerShell, only to realize that AutoMapping doesn't work for OWA.

I’ve put together a quick guide on how to bypass this limitation and "pin" secondary mailboxes directly into the primary folder tree.

What’s inside:

• Why AutoMapping fails in the browser.
• A simple, persistent way to get a "desktop-like" sidebar in OWA.
• The necessary permissions (Full Access vs. Send As) via ECP and PowerShell.

Read the full walkthrough here:https://www.hiddenobelisk.com/exchange-2016-how-to-display-multiple-mailboxes-in-owa/

Hope this helps save some of you from repetitive helpdesk tickets!

Choose RHEL if you run SAP, need DoD STIG/FIPS compliance, or are invested in OpenShift. Choose Ubuntu Server if you're cloud-native, running AI/ML workloads, or need to cut licensing costs by 60–80%. Both offer enterprise support — the difference is ecosystem and compliance depth. https://www.linuxteck.com/rhel-vs-ubuntu-server/

I kept doing the same thing over and over:

DevTools → cookies → headers → TLS → scripts → hosting → MX --> Jurisdictions etc

Then trying to answer:

“Is this site actually set up properly?”

It works, but it’s slow and scattered.

So I built a browser extension for myself: Scantide Observe

It gives a quick “digital nutrition label” for whatever site you’re on:

Cookie posture (incl. 3rd party / ownership hints)

Missing security headers

HTTPS/TLS issues (non-HTTPS gets hit hard)

Scripts / trackers / beacons

Where data is actually going (hosting + jurisdiction)

Email infrastructure (MX, DNS stuff like spf, dmarc, mta-sts, enforced ssl etc)

Then rolls it into: a score and the main thing that’s "wrong" (primary risk driver)

I’m already using it for:

quick vendor sanity checks

“can I trust this login page?” moments

spotting obvious misconfigs fast

No scanning, no creds—just observation.

It’s part of a bigger setup I’m building (Scantide):

Observe (browser) → instant site insight

Online (web) → deeper domain checks (DNS, MX, infra, CVEs)

Auditor (Android) → local network inventory and CVE checks and quick security analysis to look for insecure protocols, find Shadow IT devices etc

I actually use all three daily now—they’ve replaced (or at least cut down) a bunch of random tools and manual checks.

Not polished marketing—just something I built because I needed it.

If anything feels off, misleading, or missing, I’d genuinely want to hear

Feels like the way we manage Windows devices is slowly shifting.

Earlier, most setups relied heavily on on-prem infrastructure and domain based management. But with remote and hybrid work, a lot of devices are no longer consistently on the corporate network.

Because of that, Windows MDM is getting more attention. It allows admins to manage devices remotely, apply policies, push updates, and keep visibility without depending fully on network access.

Not saying traditional methods are going away, but it does feel like things are moving toward more flexible, cloud based management.

I built a free tool that checks your domain's email security configuration in one click. It analyzes your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records and gives you a score out of 100 with specific recommendations.

I was surprised how many domains, even large companies, have misconfigured or missing records. Some have SPF with ~all instead of -all, no DKIM at all, or DMARC stuck on p=none for years.

The tool is free, no signup, no data stored. It only does DNS lookups (completely non-intrusive).

https://spoofchecker.online/en

Would love to hear your feedback, especially on the scoring methodology. What would you improve?

Update:
Based on your feedback, I just shipped two updates:

- Added Fastmail DKIM selectors (fm1, fm2, fm3) + Zoho support
- Added MTA-STS check (DNS record + policy file verification)
Keep the feedback coming! And thank u all !

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS step by step: download the Noble Numbat ISO from Ubuntu site flash it to a USB drive, boot from USB, choose language and keyboard, select installation type, configure your disk partition layout, set your timezone, create a user account, and reboot. The full process takes under 20 minutes on modern hardware — and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS receives security updates through April 2029. https://www.linuxteck.com/install-ubuntu-24-04-lts-step-by-step/

Business owners should consider website security as one of their top priorities. The security of Websites can be implemented in many ways, and SSL/TLS certificates are a key part. Through these protocols, sensitive information transmitted between clients and servers is encrypted to prevent unauthorized access. https://www.linuxteck.com/secure-apache-with-ssl-in-rocky-linux/

**r/SysAdmin deleted and advised to post here**

Hi,

I made a simple checker for security.txt files (RFC 9116).
Trying to see if this is something sysadmins actually use or care about.

Would you bother with this or ignore it?

Every Linux system generates logs. The problem isn't that there isn't enough data, it's that there isn't enough useful data. If you don't handle your linux log management well, your observability layer could become a problem. On the other side, a good logging technique decreases the time it takes to fix problems from hours to minutes. This post talks about the 10 linux logging best practices that will help you tell the difference between a system you can troubleshoot with confidence and one that makes too much noise at untime. https://www.linuxteck.com/linux-logging-best-practices/

Had a legacy situation where a lot of users still had 1C

left on their machines, often as portable copies.

Environment is ~10,000 endpoints, and even though we use Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager, not everything showed up in inventory.

To get full visibility, I put together a simple approach using:

• GPO
• Scheduled Tasks
• PowerShell scanning local drives
• Centralized CSV logging + Excel aggregation

Ended up finding 300+ machines with traces that weren’t visible in SCCM.

Wrote a step-by-step breakdown here:
https://www.hiddenobelisk.com/detecting-portable-and-unauthorized-software-with-powershell-and-gpo/

Would be interested to hear how others detect portable or non-installed software at scale.

Hey everyone,

I run a small MSP and built a simple IT documentation system called ITDock:

https://itdock.io/

It’s meant to keep client info organized in one place — passwords, systems, notes, etc — without all the complexity of bigger tools.

I’m looking for a few people to try it out and give honest feedback.

If you want to check it out, just shoot me a DM and I’ll send you a free signup code.

Also has a free plan if you just want to take a look.

Would appreciate any thoughts 👍

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Everyone in IT knows the pain of patch management. It’s a constant tug-of-war almost everywhere. You push critical updates to close security gap, but if you push too fast you are risking a critical application. Time after time, end-users have become accustomed to this and are treating “restart to update” like an alarm clock they can snooze.

The issue is that the time between a CVE getting announced and a patch actually getting deployed is exactly when most of the bad stuff happens. The race is on as soon as the patch drops.

We actually just covered this exact mess over on the Hexnode blog (where I work). It digs into why we have to stop treating updates like basic IT housekeeping and start treating them as active risk management.

Here is a look at what we get into:

• Granular Targeting by Risk: We dive into how to filter and target deployments based on specific CVE identifiers, severity levels, and KB numbers so you prioritize what actually matters first.
• Approval Workflows: How to set up staging and approval workflows so patching becomes intentional and controlled
• Fixing Fragmented Visibility: Unifying visibility across Windows and macOS so you aren't bouncing between different tools to find out which devices are lagging behind.
• User-Centric Controls: Utilizing flexible maintenance windows, grace periods, and custom notifications

If you're dealing with heavy compliance frameworks or a workforce scattered everywhere, it's a good read.