Powershell Ise Snippets

Whether you are a pro with PowerShell or a beginner, PowerShell ISE snippets can speed up your scripting and assist when you are unsure of formatting. Most IT professionals who work with PowerShell to build tools, scripts, or modules use the built-in PowerShell ISE (Integrated Scripting Environment) to build and debug their code. Read More

Processing Csv Data in Powershell

In this post, I explain how to create a PowerShell function to process CSV data. This allows you to reuse your code whenever you are working with CSV files in PowerShell. CSV (Comma-Separated Values) is used by almost every technology platform that we encounter. Manipulating this data can be cumbersome if you’re NOT an Excel wizard, but PowerShell can simplify this job. For example, Read More

Manage User Rights With Group Policy

Group Policy is nothing but flexible and extremely powerful when it comes to both configuration management and installation of software. In addition, Group Policy is one of your best tools for securing your endpoints. You can manage anything and everything from Firewall rules, account privileges, application white-listing, etc. You can also manage user rights as well. Computers and Users in your environment have a lot of rights, by default, that they don’t need. Continue reading

Cattle vs Unicorns

When organizations begin to think of users as cattle instead of unicorns we begin to remove their pride for, and their responsibility to, an organization. When responsibility for their actions are only out of necessity or self-preservation then you have lost the battle, but not necessarily the war. You can change people’s mindset but it just may take a little more effort. I believe that people are the answer to most security problems. Continue reading

Understanding Group Policy Order

Group Policy order can be confusing. To understand how exactly Windows applies one GPO (Group Policy Object) versus another, you can use the “LSD OU” rule. You should always ask yourself two questions when dealing with Group Policy: Where are you (local, site, domain, or organizational unit)? What are you (computer or user)? Read More

Run Powershell Scripts as Immediate Scheduled Tasks With Group Policy

To run a PowerShell script on multiple computers via Group Policy, you can work with an Immediate Scheduled Task. The main advantage over logon scripts is that you can execute your script with admin rights. Read More.

Add and Remove Users to Ad Groups With Group Policy

Group Policy allows you to add and remove users to an Active Directory (AD) group. Using this feature improves security because you can ensure that high-risk security groups only contain the users that you specify via Group Policy. Read More