average admins

Ok, I’m doing some research for entry level gateway firwalls.  I’m looking at the SonicWall Pro 1260 w/ Enhanced OS and the Cisco ASA 5505 Security Plus Bundle.  Both have VPN, SSL peers, DMZ, and firewall capabilities.  I know that the number of ports don’t come close on the two, but I’m going to be pluggnig two Linksys switches uploaded to them that all 25 of my workstations link to.  Since I’m a little of a green horn at this security end of IT, what are your thoughts?

I use the MMC for various system management jobs but I’ve never thought about blogging about it. It’s just one of those things that I’ve never given a second thought.

Rob, from confessions of a freeware junkie, posted about how he has his setup. I have to say, his looks a lot more useful that the one I created.

http://maximillianx.blogspot.com/…-extending-power-of-your-management.html

One thing I do differently than Rob is that I launch the entire MMC with my domain admin credentials. This is what the Target: field of my shortcut looks like:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\runas.exe /user:domain\my-admin-acct “mmc C:\Chris\Microsoft Management Consoles\Domain Management.msc”

Note: If you want to save your password so you don’t have to type it in every time you launch the MMC add /savecred right after /user:domain\my-admin-acct.

Also, in order to add Active Directory Users and Computers, you’ll need the Windows Server 2003 Administration Tools Pack available here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/…

While you’re at his site, take a look around. I monitor his RSS feed on Bloglines and he’s always posting cool stuff.