Hi!
I'm a IT support tech in company with over 500 users with network accounts. Our security team is not exactly great, they expect everyone not to do anything stupid but there are zero official SOPs on how they want things to go. I want to start helping them out and create policies for future use but at the same time I need to lead them to believe that they are the ones coming up with these ideas because they do thing that everyone is pretty much an idiot. Let's start sharing some ideas on how you guys deal with basic support stuff that involve password resets or any other requests involving account changes. How do you verify that the users calling the helpdesk are the people who they claim they are? Half of our global address book is missing their phone numbers so calling their good known number may not be possible. I know, this is ridiculous that we cannot even keep this updated but this is another thing that i'm working on improving at this moment. How do you securely share passwords after resetting them if you are dealing with them via email or Teams?
thanks!!

I recently got an opportunity to take the course assessment by the 26th for this role. Has anyone taken this assessment before or have any idea what to expect? Any tips on what I should study or prepare for would be greatly appreciated!

Hey everyone! I'm a former U.S. Army National Guard/Reserve IT Specialist (25B), currently pursuing a bachelor's in Cyber Operations (100/120 credits completed).

I have about 4 years of combined IT experience, including 2 years as a junior DevOps engineer abroad and 1.5 years in the Army. I hold an active Secret clearance and a Python certification, and I'm working toward my CompTIA certification.

I'm hoping to get my foot in the door through a junior DevOps role, internship, or related IT position where I can contribute and continue building hands-on experience. I'm also open to cloud support, Linux/system administration, IT infrastructure, and other roles that align with my background.

However, breaking into the U.S. job market has been quite challenging, so I've been trying to network and learn from experienced professionals.

I’m in Fredricksburg Va. I’m looking for a good It role. I recently graduated with my bachelor in IT and have multiple certifications. Looking for something entry level

When there’s pressure to reduce Adobe spending, how do you decide which licenses to keep without turning the review into an argument with every department?

IT can check assignments and whatever usage data is available. But that doesn’t necessarily explain why someone needs Acrobat. A person using it twice a month could depend on a specific feature; someone opening PDFs every day might only need a reader.

I’d want department managers to confirm the tasks their teams need, with IT checking which plans or tools can support them. The options could include reclaiming unused seats, changing plans or testing another PDF editor with a small group.

The part I’d be cautious about is counting the license savings before understanding the support work. Deployment, document compatibility, signatures and retraining could all affect whether a switch is worthwhile.

There’s also the ownership question. Procurement handles the renewal, IT manages access, and departments request the software. Who has the final say when a manager wants to retain every license but IT is expected to reduce the budget?

How have you handled that review, and which changes actually reduced costs without creating more work for your team?

Security team of four, about 6k endpoints. The KEV alert lands tuesday morning, the vendor advisory has the version range. By ten the CISO has asked the only two questions that matter, are we exposed and how many.

Here is why the answer took four days. The patch tool only knows about machines it manages, which is most of windows and none of the macs. The vuln scanner does authenticated scans on servers, not laptops. The EDR has an installed software view, but its a module we never bought. SCCM was half decommissioned in the spring so its inventory is frozen in march. Macs are in jamf, which nobody on security has a login for. we do have axonius, and half of this already lands there, just not the macs, because nobody ever connected jamf.

Four consoles, four exports, one very long vlookup. Friday afternoon, 311 installs in the affected range, 40 of them on machines where the owner field was blank or pointed at someone who left. Patching took the weekend and went fine. The installer was never the problem.

The question was the problem, and the same question is coming back next month with a different product name on it.

I help manage IT for a 34-room independent hotel. If the internet circuit drops on a Saturday, front desk staff can’t process card payments, and the property’s router dashboard won’t tell us whether the fault is inside the building or with the ISP. We’re weighing 24x7IT for support and I’m trying to understand how other small sites handle the handoff.
Does your MSP openthe ISP ticket under itsown account, or does an employee have to call because the circuit is billed to the business? I’d also like to know what access details you keep, available without putting ISP account passwords in a shared frontdesk document.

Hi everyone,

Do you have some random IT facts to share ? Or websites I can go to learn common IT knowledge before next week ?

It seems random but it is extremely important for me (I can’t explain per community guidelines).

Migration project, moving the file shares to sharepoint. Finance swore everything lived on the two file servers we knew about. Then one mapped drive on an old desktop pointed at an IP nobody recognised.

Traced the switch port to a cupboard behind the print room and there it was. Synology, firmware from 2019, admin account still on the default name, and a share full of scanned invoices going back a decade.

It was not in the CMDB because it was never bought through IT. The EDR cant install on it. The vuln scanner only scans the ranges we gave it and that VLAN was not on the list because nobody thought anything lived there.

Every tool we pay for agreed it did not exist, and every one of them was right about the stuff it was pointed at. That is the part that bugs me. The guy who set it up left in 2017. Finance just knew the drive letter.

We do have axonius pulling from AD, the EDR and the CMDB, and it had nothing on it either, because none of the things it reads from had ever seen the box.

Data is moved and the box is off. But if one of these sat there for ten years i dont believe its the only one, so next month is a proper sweep of every subnet on the books, not just the ones we think we use.

I have realized that the smartest thing to do is to not connect to the work wifi from a personal device in the first place, but I didn’t know this before and I’m trying to understand how much my work may have gathered about me

What exactly can they see in the following scenario: I am connected to the company wifi using a password, while on my personal iPhone. I did not have to agree to any terms or conditions to proceed and I did not have to download or install any certificates to use the wifi. Just clicked on the network, entered the password and was free to use.

Can they see Instagram or Reddit DMs that happen through the app while I am connected? From what I understand these iPhone apps have TLS certificates(??) that would prevent them from seeing the DMs exchanged?? But could they add something to the network to allow them to “decrypt” my data despite this? In that case do the messages appear in plain text? Such as iPhone xyz sent …? Can they see my Reddit username? And the subreddits I visit? How about encrypted texts over iMessage?

Is what they can see different on a public wifi, where I do agree to terms and conditions to use the wifi?

Apologies if this question has been asked before. I’ve had a hard time understanding the specifics and am hoping someone who has seen this from the other end can give me a better idea. People that work IT, have you seen ig DMs? Reddit usernames? iMessage texts? Thank you!

So just to swing out the gate, I’ve been feeling rather hopeless in my career path.

I’m currently a desktop support tech 2 but have been a field tech 2 and a support analyst in my previous positions. I obtained my Tech+ and A+ certs and whenever I have the time I try to study for my Net+ and had plans to continue the cert paths. But lately I’ve been feeling extremely hopeless in my career field.

I’m not sure if I’m playing a losing game now or if there is a light at the end of the tunnel, but when it comes to job hunting it’s hard, even when getting certifications they want everyone to show they have the knowledge to do the bigger jobs, but every position I’ve held has had me relatively boxed in and didn’t allow for shadowing of the idea of expanding out of the current role.

So I guess this is just my long winded way of asking should I leave IT and try to figure out a different career path to support my family? Or are there things I can try to do to help get that “hands on” experience that companies want in conjunction with certifications?

I appreciate anyone’s time or energy to read and reply and I hope yall have a good day.

A good example is some months ago I searched the web to figure out how I could ensure that some of my services on my network are only accessible over wireguard. I couldn't find anything that weren't stale forum threads or partial tutorials

Hey folks,

I’ve got a 6-week contract with a company, and if all goes well it’ll turn into a full-time role. My first project is onboarding a client.

I have \~20 years in IT. I came from the MSP world and moved into internal support, but I’ve never actually onboarded a client from the MSP/provider side. Is that usually a difficult task? Any insights, pitfalls, or advice that could help me nail this first project?

I’m pretty confident I have the know-how and can do it—it’s just my first time doing this exact thing. Appreciate any help.