On May 24, 2019, Fortinet published an advisory stating that certain versions of their FortiOS software are vulnerable to a path traversal attack which allows an attacker to download system files through specially crafted HTTP requests. The vulnerability is only present when the SSL VPN service is enabled – either web-mode or tunnel-mode. The vulnerable FortiOS versions and the corresponding patched versions are:

It was announced on August 16th that 22 Texas cities were attacked and infected with ransomware, rendering many of their municipal IT systems unavailable to conduct daily business. The mayor of one of these cities has said the ransom request was $2.5 million to unlock their files. The Texas Department of Information Resources believes this was a coordinated attack by a single threat actor. Source: https://dir.texas.gov/View-About-DIR/Article-Detail.aspx?id=209

After a lot of work and testing, CoNetrix Technology is pleased to announce the release of its new Cybersecurity Monitoring and Compliance solution. The new solution is being offered in response to customer needs for a security incident detection service. With the new service, customers will have access to new options for security information and event management (SIEM) and security operations centers (SOC). SIEM-as-a Service and SOC-as-a Service options are available for organizations that need a fully hosted solution with monitoring and management. SIEM management is also available for companies that already have a SIEM platform and just need help with management and monitoring.

The world of cybersecurity has had some fundamental shifts in the past several years that have made the vast majority of companies unprepared for today's threats. The extensive use of malware, for example, has dramatically reduced the value of traditional security solutions, such as firewalls, IDS/IPS, and anti-virus software. These solutions that used to adequately prevent attacks are now very limited in their risk mitigation value. Many organizations have not updated their cybersecurity technology and solutions to stop today's threats. It's like monitoring your front door for a break in while someone comes in through the back window.

The Technology and Security groups at CoNetrix have received several questions from customers about the announcement from Oracle to move to a paid subscription model for commercial users. This issue has been very confusing for everyone as we try to decipher what this means with the various versions and editions of Java available today. In this article, we will attempt to clear up some of the confusion and provide recommendations going forward.

I was about to make a call on my Android phone, and when I went into the phone app, I noticed all my contact names were gone, instead it was just the phone numbers. First I went to make sure Google contacts were turned on. Then I made sure they were properly synced, but still nothing.

If you have a Lenovo laptop with a built-in battery and it won't power on or wake-up from a sleep state, you can use the pin-hole emergency reset hole (button) to resolve the issue. Disconnect the power adapter and depress this button with a paper-clip or similar item. Wait for 1 minute, then reconnect the AC adapter or power up using the battery.

After migrating Exchange to a new domain, the "Conversation History" folder in Outlook to see Skype conversation history quit syncing conversations. Follow these steps below to get conversations to show up again:

We recently installed some new blade servers in our Aspire datacenter and I was working on getting ESXi 6.5 installed on them. After the installation, took the opportunity to upgrade to 6.7. I didn't want to mount an ISO to iLO, reboot each host, wipe the config, and start fresh – I wanted to do an in-place upgrade.When a host is connected to vCenter and Update Manager, you can just use Update Manager to create a baseline for the in-place upgrade. These are fairly fresh installations and were not connected to our vCenter environment so I needed an alternative. Standalone hosts can also be upgraded using an Offline Bundle download and the "esxcli software profile" commands. I wanted to use an HP branded bundle so couldn't use the online depot, which means I would need to download the offline bundle, upload it either to every host or to a shared datastore which didn't yet exist. Surely there's an even simpler method that would still allow me to use an HP branded offline bundle image and not have to worry about the shared datastore.Fortunately, there's a PowerShell method available. The "Install-VMHostPatch" cmdlet allows you to install host patches stored either locally, from a web location, or in a host file system.If you have multiple hosts, just connect to all of them in the same PowerShell session (or connect to vCenter, if that's available) – "Connect-VIServer -Server abc123.host.local -User root -Password LocalPassword" – and run a "Get-VMHost | Install-VMHostPatch" to install the patches at the same time.The basic syntax and instructions can be found here - https://www.vmware.com/support/developer/PowerCLI/PowerCLI41U1/html/Install-VMHostPatch.html - this is a quick and easy way to install patches without Update Manager or enabling SSH on each individual host.One other thing to note, I ran into issues with the Local Path and Web Path, but I believe it was due to a lack of available space in the tmp partition to copy the installation files. Unfortunately, this means I had to mount a shared datastore anyway, but setting up NFS on a spare Linux appliance made even that simpler than it could've been.

Cyber Threat Hunting has been popular for some time. There is a good reason for this. Threat hunting actually involves actively going out and iteratively searching your networks in order to detect and isolate advanced threats. This is a proactive exercise which is a total contrast to typical cyber defense where it seems like we just wait for an inevitable breach to occur. Too often the breach is discovered when a kind third-party (hopefully not a regulatory agency or law enforcement) make contact and informs one of the situations. Threat hunting is very appealing because it gives the sense of being active and not sitting idle.

CoNetrix Technology opened its first satellite office in Midland, Texas to better serve its existing customers and extend services to businesses in the surrounding areas. CoNetrix Technology, a subsidiary of CoNetrix, LLC, opened its first satellite office in Midland, Texas to satisfy the needs of the company's growing customer base. CoNetrix Technology provides computer network support, IT managed services, and private cloud hosting for businesses. By adding an office in Midland, Texas, CoNetrix Technology is better positioned to serve its existing customers and extend services to businesses in Midland/Odessa and the surrounding communities.

Tandem, a subsidiary of CoNetrix, is inviting users to explore their new website—https://tandem.app. With a fresh look, the new marketing website offers customers a better user-experience and a new way to connect to Tandem while learning more about the software.