Ok, it won’t really be spooky (though you can come in costume if you want to), I’m just trying to catch your attention. October 11th is the 2nd Wednesday of the month, which means Technology Wizards will be having its monthly meeting from 12 pm to 3 pm at the Microsoft PacWest Office (1414 Northrup, in the Pearl District).
Until last Friday we had a group of speakers lined up to do a really relevant and timely presentation, but they jumped ship on us since they decided they needed more time to put together a better presentation. That’s great, but it left us fumbling for a meeting topic so that we could get an announcement out to you.
What we’ve come up with will be sort of a combination of our previous discussions of best practices, with mini-presentations/guided discussions on relevant topics. I’ll be bringing a gong with me just in case we start going down the rabbit hole.
Ripe topics for discussion, either guided or best practices. Respond if you have others or bring them with you:
- Web and sign on security. There have been a lot of developments in this area lately, ranging from Google essentially mandating that all websites become https sites and the Electronic Frontier Foundation launching their Let’s Encrypt initiative, to developments with Two Factor Authentication that range from the deprecation from one long used method to some major vulnerabilities being exposed with 2FA. Not to mention developments in sign-on options, such as Steve Gibson’s SQRL initiative
- OS Upgrades – Especially the newly released Windows 10 Creator (and Fall) Update. There is a lot going on with this right now. How do we keep up, what do our clients need, and what is relevant both to our business and to the business of our clients. Conversely, what is irrelevant and what can be ignored.
- SSL filtering – An increasingly hot button topic, especially as businesses are becoming more concerned about breaches, and data being exfiltrated.
- Breaches – This is an increasingly huge topic, especially as new, highly punitive laws are coming into effect that should be a major consideration for businesses that might be breached. How to detect a breach, minimize the scope and impact of one, and respond to one. What can we offer to our clients that is of relevance to them?
- DNS – An often ignored topic in our world, but it can be of supreme importance. For instance, how to prevent or mitigate DNS based attacks, including using DNS to exfiltrate data. Internally, how do you we configure and employ DNS internally, or even deal with DNS related problems in the network? Externally, how do we also configure and employ DNS, how can it be used to defend our networks, but also the positive and negative effects of our external DNS configuration on our internal network.
- Relevance – there are a whole lot of things to be discussed here. For instance, how do we stay relevant in the market, both to existing clients and to potential future clients. What needs to change to stay relevant, and what needs to stay the same. As a wrinkle on this, how does Technology Wizards remain relevant to its members?
Lunch is not being provided this month, so plan accordingly. If nothing else, Safeway is about two blocks away, and they have a pretty good selection of Deli sandwiches and other things.
Reminder: Technology Wizards meetings are intended for current Technology Wizards members or potential members. Potential members must be owners or employees of a/an IT services business whose main purpose is to support small business using Microsoft products and services in some capacity.
Matt Wilson
Technology Wizards
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.