IT Security Road Show

Today I went to an IT Security Road Show put on by Windows IT Pro Magazine. There were some very good sessions about security and although I felt like I already knew about all the guy from Microsoft was saying, I still managed to learn a thing or two from him anyway. Two things in particular that I did not know about (that are free tools provided by Microsoft) are:

The policy template files provided with the Microsoft® Office 2003 Editions Resource Kit enable you to set policies globally for users of Office on a network. By using policies, an administrator can quickly enforce a user configuration on users' computers when users, groups, or computers log on to the network.

Microsoft Port Reporter Port Reporter logs TCP and UDP port activity on a local Windows system. Port Reporter is a small application that runs as a service on Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003.
On Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 this service is able to log which ports are used, which process is using the port, if the process is a service, which modules the process has loaded and which user account is running the process.

One of the other speakers worked for RSA Security (you know the guys with the little tokens).

They now have a very cool program that integrates directly into Windows and presents you with a different logon screen (sorry for the black and white, it is a screen capture from a PDF)

Gotta run now, I have dog school tonight and Casey has an obedience show this weekend!!