Michael Reinders

Are you looking to improve the security of your Active Directory environment? Learn how to set up the PingCastle Community Pack and strengthen your network defenses. What is PingCastle? PingCastle is a free, open-sourced tool designed to assess the security level of your Active Directory environment quickly. It’s based on a methodology focusing on risk…

Learn about the new version of Microsoft Office 2024 on the Long Term Service Channel (LTSC). We’ll dive into new features, pricing, expected availability, and the main reasons you should choose this perpetual version vs the hyped Microsoft 365 subscription model. Stay up to date and make informed decisions with this guide. What is Office…

In this article, I’ll explain what role-based access control (RBAC) is and how to configure it in Windows Admin Center. Next, I will cover topics such as creating roles, assigning permissions, and adding users and groups. I’ll include best practices and tips for managing access to your resources with Windows Admin Center. Windows Admin Center…

Windows Admin Center (WAC) is the modern evolution of “in-box” management tools, like MMC (Microsoft Management Console) and Server Manager for Windows Server management. WAC provides wizards to guide users through its deployment and deploying Windows Servers and other cluster solutions. Learn more about what Windows Admin Center features and capabilities might be useful to…

In this article, I will demonstrate how to use Windows Admin Center (WAC) to remotely manage your servers. If you haven’t already, check out my article on how to download and install Windows Admin Center before starting with the tutorial below. How to Use Windows Admin Center When you launch Windows Admin Center, you’ll see…

Backup and replication are common data protection concepts, but they serve different purposes. Learn more about their differences and how they can benefit your data management strategy, especially how the backup vs replication argument relates to Active Directory (AD) and protecting it. What are backup and replication? Although backup and replication are both methods of…

You’ve probably heard about Windows Server – Microsoft’s enterprise server counterpart to its end-user client Windows 10 and 11 operating systems. But what is Windows Server exactly and how much do you know about it? Why would you want to install it and use it in your environment? What are the current supported versions and…

Discover the benefits of using Azure AD B2B in your organization. Learn how it can improve collaboration and streamline access for external partners, and boost your users’ productivity, safely and securely. What is Azure B2B? Microsoft Entra B2B (formerly Azure AD B2B) is a feature/service within the Microsoft Entra ID that allows collaboration between your…

Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) B2C is a cloud-based customer identity and access management service that provides business-to-customer (B2C) Identity-as-a-Service. It allows organizations to secure and manage their customer-facing applications – so external parties can seamlessly sign up and log in. Learn more about the features and benefits of Azure AD B2C below. What is…

Audit your Active Directory environment to ensure the security of your company’s most valuable assets. Here are the top 10 events to audit in Active Directory to identify risks. Active Directory auditing involves more than tracking individual event IDs, it’s about understanding where privilege, persistence, and policy changes occur across the directory. This article focuses specifically on the most important…

How familiar are you with Windows Server Backup? You may be surprised by its value in your organization. I’ll explain what its main purpose is and how to use Windows Server Backup to back up Windows Server file servers and an Active Directory (AD) domain controller. What is Windows Server Backup? Windows Server has had…

Windows allows users to assign permissions to files and folders, for added security and to control which users can perform specific actions on files and folders. Learn all you need to know about basic permissions, folder permissions, user permissions, explicit permissions, and much more. What are NTFS permissions? NTFS permissions, first introduced with Microsoft Windows…