For almost two decades I’ve seen lots of crap in IT departments, and one of the major problems is the attitude of dealing with things later. So lets say you installed Windows 2008 R2 yet you will deal with windows updates “later” … AFTER you finished configuring IIS or Apache or whatever AND then on top of that all you, did not complete change management or document what you did on that server at all.

Anyway, am not writing this to preach on how you should do your work, but because of the attitude above you might not have one in few months, because your company lost revenue due to hacked system.

Minimal/General things to consider before and after…

• Scan your server for vulnerabilities before you do anything ( Use tools like Nessus, Openvas (open source), Rapid7 and others)
• Install your software, make sure its up to date
• Do windows or linux updates
• Scan your server for vulnerabilities again ( if you find something fix it right away, don’t wait)
• Note information you did on the server , that includes creating any type of usernames, updates, fixes, installs, etc.. basically everything you did on that server.
• If you are installing some type of new software, take screenshots, be very specific as to what you did to install it correctly.

The steps above are really minimal but the impact on security is greater and can sometimes even save you from unwanted attacks.

One thing I always do is join newsletters, blog rss feeds and company events that their software runs on corporate network.. this way you are always up to date. Update notifications for software is fine too, but most likely too late if you get hacked.

The stuff above really applies to everything in life, if you have that little hint of “I’ll do it later” yet takes you 2 minutes to do it, do it right then and there!..

“I’ll clean my teeth tomorrow.. am too sleepy” – you will most likely say same sh** tomorrow!

For past few years my predictions in technology were 90% accurate and spot on the release dates for gadgets.  Just recently my iOS 5 predictions were 100% accurate and lets hope that iOS 5 release date prediction is also going to be spot on.

iOS 5 Release Date Predictions

iOS 5 Beta 4 – July 25th

iOS 5 Final Release – Late August

According to what I see in tech industry and how things are moving around, iOS 5 should be released to public in late August. To be more specific I am thinking August 22nd.  It does not really take any special sense to predict those dates, basically I compared how apple worked out previous iOS 3-4 releases and apply that same knowledge to iOS 5.

IBM researches predicted that in next 5 years there are going to be devices which will be able to display holographic images. I totally support that prediction because I predicted that about 4 months before they even release that news to the world.  Bad thing about such predictions is that there is two things that can happen to me : If predictions of mine are correct I get to be called , genius.. but if they are incorrect, I get to be called an Idiot…Oh well! Ill take my chances whether I was right or wrong.

So far all my predictions are 90% accurate in IT world.