• Zimbra rocks!

    31Jul
    Author: ben Categories: Infrastructure, Ramblings Comments: 0

    Zimbra At Applied Trust we’ve been using the Zimbra Collaboration Suite for a few years now. Ned is our primary admin, and he probably has some criticisms based on his in-depth experience, but from my user perspective it has been great. A few highlights for me:

    • I have a good sized mailbox – about 3GB with tens of thousands of individual messages – and our very simple server is plenty fast. Loading messages out of any folder is quick and painless. Searching is also very fast.
    • The shared calendar features are spectacular. Setting up meetings with Exchange users is a cinch. Words like “August 3rd” or “Thursday” in the email window are highlighted, and holding the mouse over it shows upcoming meetings. My only complaint is that you can’t seem to set the default calendar sharing rules for new users. When we hire new people, we need to both make our calendar viewable by them, and accept their calendar share. High maintenance.
    • Similarly, contacts works great. Very little to say since it works so well.
    • Integration with the iPhone is as good as for Exchange users. I have calendars, email and contacts on my phone with no problem.

    On the infrastructure side, Ned probably has more to say, but we’ve done many upgrades and they all seem to have gone very smoothly.

    As an open source-based collaboration suite, Zimbra is a strong competitor Exchange. I’m happy. Ned, care to comment?

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  • Join us for Telluride Tech Festival @Boulder

    30Jul
    Author: trent Categories: Ramblings Comments: 0

    We’ve been a long-time corporate sponsor of the Telluride Technology Festival, a 501(c)3 not-for-profit that whose mission is to celebrate the history of technology and build a community focused on encouraging future innovators through education and awareness.  Normally, TechFest gatherings are held in Telluride, but this year we’re having a special celebration in Boulder.

    Join us tonight (July 30, 2009) 5:30pm-9:00pm at the NCAR Mesa top lab — free food and drink, and networking with tech folks.  More info at www.techfestival.org.

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  • Office Facilities – they DO make a difference

    27Jul
    Author: trent Categories: Ramblings Comments: 1

    I’m honored to know Todd Vernon, CEO of Lijit.  His blog is not only entertaining, but it’s always “dead on” right, in an eerie sort of way. As a security guy I was super-entertained by Todd’s analysis of the Clear shutdown a few weeks ago.  Today, Todd has an excellent post on Does Startup Location Matter?

    This is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart, as those of you who have visited our Boulder offices know.  In 2003, we purchased the 3rd floor of the Columbine building in downtown Boulder (above Amante Coffee).  A bold and expensive move for us at the time — and possibly one of the best decisions we’ve ever made.  We’re very proud of our offices.  They’re in a great location, and are definitely a bonus when it comes to recruiting the highly-talented engineers that we look for.  I couldn’t agree more with Todd’s point that being close to the action makes a big difference. Read more »

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  • Fend off disaster with preventative maintenance

    20Jul
    Author: paul Categories: IT Management, Infrastructure Comments: 2


    Last week at Applied Trust we held our first annual “Preventative Maintenance Day” (PMD), aimed at preempting software and hardware failures and performing those little tasks that are important, but that are often placed on the back burner in favor of more pressing issues.

    To minimize operational impact, the business day was bordered by two planned downtime periods in which the tasks requiring that systems be offline would occur, in addition to several other maintenance periods that didn’t require infrastructure outages during business hours. Each maintenance period had at least one small team consisting of several people assigned to perform -planned tasks.

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  • Modern Day Social Engineering

    19Jul
    Author: admin Categories: IT Management, Ramblings, Security Comments: 0

    I’ve always been interested in social engineering.  Well, I guess to be fair, I should cite Kevin Mitnick’s book, “The Art Of Deception” as the official catalyst to my intrigue, but the examples outlined in that book don’t do  modern day social engineering justice.  The art of social engineering has greatly evolved.  The days of cold calling have greatly diminished with the wide spread availability of information on search engines like the Google.  It is now possible to achieve a much higher success rate by scavenging publically available information off of these search engines, which in turn allows an attacker to narrow his search and target a specific individual or department.

    The following scenario outlines a modern day social engineering attempt.

    Social Engineering Exercise 1.

    The social engineer (“SE”) begins by visiting ACME company’s website with the intent of gathering information to aid him in his social engineering attempt.   SE visits the Contact Us page which only provides a general support contact number.  This information by itself is not very useful by itself, but SE records it anyways.  Not to be discouraged, SE browses through the News Releases section of the site, and finds a quote about security from the head of the IT department “Marshall Jones.”  Using various combinations of “Marshall,” “Jones,” and “ACME,” in a search engine, SE uncovers an internal personnel directory that contains contact information for ACME staff.

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