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New SA Training Topic 13: Other topics

These are other topics that are important in our organization, but that we won’t have time to cover in any depth. Mail Fault Tolerance Ethics Forensics Scripting Printing. New SA Training Topic 13: Other topics. Mail.

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New SA Training Topic 13: Other topics

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  1. These are other topics that are important in our organization, but that we won’t have time to cover in any depth. Mail Fault Tolerance Ethics Forensics Scripting Printing New SA TrainingTopic 13: Other topics

  2. Mail • Mail may be the most visible area of systems administration failure to users • Mail relies on a number of services/software packages • Mail User Agent (E-Mail client) • Mail Submission Agent (connects MUA to MTA) • Mail Delivery Agent (accepts mail, routes to user box or forwards, may be part of MTA) • Mail Transport Agent (E-Mail server) • Protocols • POP3 (download to client) • IMAP (client accesses mail, leaving it on server) • SMTP (upload to server and server to server)

  3. Fault Tolerance • The ability of a system to respond gracefully to an unexpected hardware or software failure. There are many levels of fault tolerance, the lowest being the ability to continue operation in the event of a power failure. Many fault-tolerant computer systems mirror all operations -- that is, every operation is performed on two or more duplicate systems, so if one fails the other can take over.

  4. Fault Tolerance (cont.) • Fault-tolerance methods • Replication: Providing multiple identical instances of the same system, directing tasks or requests to all of them in parallel, and choosing the correct result on the basis of a quorum [EX – load balancing servers] • Redundancy: Providing multiple identical instances of the same system and switching to one of the remaining instances in case of a failure (fall-back or backup) [EX – RAID Mirror] • Diversity: Providing multiple different implementations of the same specification, and using them like replicated systems to cope with errors in a specific implementation [EX – N-version programming]

  5. Ethics Ten Commandments Of Computer Ethics 1. Thou Shalt Not Use A Computer To Harm Other People. 2. Thou Shalt Not Interfere With Other People’s Computer Work. 3. Thou Shalt Not Snoop Around In Other People’s Computer Files. 4. Thou Shalt Not Use A Computer To Steal. 5. Thou Shalt Not Use A Computer To Bear False Witness. 6. Thou Shalt Not Copy Or Use Proprietary Software For Which You have Not Paid. 7. Thou Shalt Not Use Other People’s Computer Resources Without Authorization Or Proper Compensation. 8. Thou Shalt Not Appropriate Other People’s Intellectual Output. 9. Thou Shalt Think About The Social Consequences Of The Program You Are Writing Or The System You Are Designing. 10. Thou Shalt Always Use A Computer In Ways That Insure Consideration And Respect For Your Fellow Humans. Dr. Ramon C. Barquin, Computer Ethics Institute

  6. Ethics (cont.) • What are the possible ethical implications of the following? • In your position as a SAGE II SA for our organization, your supervising SAGE IV SA asks you to run l0phtcrack on your domain controller. In a sentence or two, explain your response.

  7. Forensics • “At a basic level, computer forensics is the analysis of information contained within and created with computer systems and computing devices, typically in the interest of figuring out what happened, when it happened, how it happened, and who was involved” • Steve Hailey • http://www.cybersecurityinstitute.biz/forensics.htm

  8. Forensics (cont.) • Deals first with computer evidence • Preservation • Identification • Extraction • Interpretation • Documentation • Also includes • Rules of evidence • Legal processes • Integrity of evidence • Factual reporting of the information found • Providing expert opinion in a court of law or other legal and/or administrative proceeding as to what was found • Considers uses of electronic data in an organization

  9. Forensics (cont.) • Requires awareness of various laws that impact on computer forensics examinations • Search and seizure • Privacy • Discovery laws • Laws governing the prevention of evidence tampering • Some areas of work • Network attacks, intrusions, and network-oriented crimes • Fraud and Financial Crimes • E-Mail extraction and analysis • On-line criminal activity such as phishing, child pornography, warez sites, etc.

  10. Scripting • What is scripting? Writing a computer program, usually a small one, to help with the automation of various SA related tasks • Windows • Starts with .cmd scripting • Evolves into WSH and/or MSH (probably using VBscript - as many students would find it familiar), involving wscript/cscript/WMI/ADSI  • Also other languages like perl, python, etc. • Linux • Starts with basic shell scripts (bash, csh, etc.) • Add AWK, sed or other functionality • Again, other languages like perl, python, etc.

  11. Scripting (cont.) • Scripting can be useful in our organization for tasks such as: • Text/file manipulation • Creating logon scripts (maybe to capture the username, then connect the user to a printer/remote filesystem, etc) • Updating files on remote workstations (maybe installing a package based on some conditions being met) • Creating shares, setting share permissions, setting filesystem permissions, etc. • Some types of service management • Registry/configuration manipulation - locally or remotely

  12. Scripting (cont.) • Some of my other views on the topic: • Start simple, using .cmd scripts with the built-in + resource kit commands • Remember that there are situations where using .cmd scripts would be fine, but that they may be inadequate at other times   • Scripting is less about a particular tool or a language and more about a way of defining a problem and implementing a solution • Good SA’s use scripts as problem solvers who know enough about the available languages and tools to get the job done • They also are able to make informed selections between the tools so that they not only get the job done, but do so in a manner which is efficient/advantageous based on a given situation

  13. Printing • Local printing vs. Network printing • Printers - Physical print devices • Print server - The machine which manages the print queues. It will have a local device defined and is responsible for all the local spooling before it sends the job to the printer itself • Print client - The machine where the print job is submitted • Queue - A group of documents waiting to be printed • Spooling - The process of writing the contents of a print job to a file on disk

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