A worthy upgrade: Next-gen security on Windows 10 proves resilient against ransomware outbreaks in 2017

Adopting reliable attack methods and techniques borrowed from more evolved threat types, ransomware attained new levels of reach and damage in 2017. The following trends characterize the ransomware narrative in the past year:

• Three global outbreaks showed the force of ransomware in making real-world impact, affecting corporate networks and bringing down critical services like hospitals, transportation, and traffic systems
• Three million unique computers encountered ransomware; millions more saw downloader trojans, exploits, emails, websites and other components of the ransomware kill chain
• New attack vectors, including compromised supply chain, exploits, phishing emails, and documents taking advantage of the DDE feature in Office were used to deliver ransomware
• More than 120 new ransomware families, plus countless variants of established families and less prevalent ransomware caught by heuristic and generic detections, emerged from a thriving cybercriminal enterprise powered by ransomware-as-a-service. ReadMore

From ‘Minecraft’ to mixed reality, Microsoft is preparing students for the future

One sunny morning in December, sixth-grader Sophia Sta. Rosa and a classmate were busy working on a book report project, using “Minecraft: Education Edition” to build an amusement park with rides based on events in a novel.

The girls created a rollercoaster, a water slide and other attractions for their park, setting their own criteria and rules for the project. They didn’t want it to be too easy, Sta. Rosa explained, and they wanted to show responsibility so their teacher would let them tackle more complex challenges. To the 11-year-old, the most important lessons she was learning from “Minecraft” weren’t about building structures or coding, but collaboration and problem-solving. ReadMore

What’s the solution to the growing problem of passwords? You, says Microsoft

uick: Change your password again. Make sure it has a combination of capital letters, numbers and special characters. Wait, no. Instead, come up with a long random phrase that you should be able to remember. Wait, no. Stop. Stop the madness! It’s time to kill the password.

This relic from the early days of computing has long outlived its usefulness, and certainly, its ability to keep criminals at bay. More than two-thirds of people use the same, usually not-very-strong password across dozens of different accounts. Weak passwords and stolen identities are the No. 1 source of data loss. Last year alone, 81 percent of major data breaches could be traced back to one individual’s compromised identity.

Microsoft and Adaptive Biotechnologies announce partnership using AI to decode immune system; diagnose, treat disease.

The human immune system is an astonishing diagnostic system, continuously adapting itself to detect any signal of disease in the body. Essentially, the state of the immune system tells a story about virtually everything affecting a person’s health. It may sound like science fiction, but what if we could “read” this story? Our scientific understanding of human health would be fundamentally advanced. And more importantly, this would provide a foundation for a new generation of precise medical diagnostic and treatment options.

Peter Lee, Corporate Vice President of AI + Research (Photo by Scott Eklund/Red Box Pictures)

Amazingly, this isn’t just science fiction, but can be science fact. And so we’re excited to announce a new partnership with Seattle-based Adaptive Biotechnologies, coupling the latest advances in AI and machine learning with recent breakthroughs in biotechnology to build a practical technology for mapping and decoding the human immune system. Together, we have a goal that is simple to state but also incredibly ambitious: create a universal blood test that reads a person’s immune system to detect a wide variety of diseases including infections, cancers and autoimmune disorders in their earliest stage, when they can be most effectively diagnosed and treated.

MCT Abu Dhabi Meetup: 13 January 2018.

Step by Step MS SQL 17 Installation on CentOS Linux Release 7.4.

LAB Setup for SQL on Centos

Traditionally, Microsoft SQL Server, being part of Microsoft’s back office platform, has always run on Windows operating systems. However, Microsoft has made a commitment to enable customers to choose any platform. As part of this commitment, for SQL Server 2017, Microsoft has released SQL Server on Linux. This version of SQL Server will run and host databases on all common distributions of Linux, including Ubuntu, SUSE, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

I am going to build this lab on VMware Work station 14 with 4 GB of RAM and 4 Core Virtual CPUs.

VM Name	IP Address	RAM	V-CPU	HDD
ms-sql-17-01.mstechguru.ae	192.168.244.135	4 GB	4	100 GB

The same VM will be used later in a cluster. In this lab I will walk through the single instance installation of SQL Server. In this lab there is no part of Linux based installation as its standard installation method I have followed for the lab setup, but you can install your Linux box as per your requirements on a production network.

Pre-requisites

·       PuTTY

·       CentOS/RHEL Server

·       SQL Server 2017 CTP 2.1 and SQL Server 2017 RC1

·       SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 17.4

SQL Security

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is a nonregulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce. In 2015, NIST reported that SQL Server had the lowest number of security vulnerabilities of all the major database systems.

New features and improvements introduced in Windows Server 2016

The following features and feature improvements were introduced in Windows Server 2016: 

·         Nano Server. Nano Server is a new installation option for Windows Server 2016. With no graphical or command prompt interface, it has a significantly lower hardware requirement than Server Core. Nano Server is the ideal platform for Hyper‑V, Hyper‑V cluster, and scale-out file servers and cloud service apps.

·         Windows Server containers and Hyper‑V containers. Containers enable you to isolate your apps from the operating system environment. This improves security and reliability. Windows containers are isolated from one another but run on the host operating system. Hyper‑V containers are further isolated, because they run within a virtual machine.

·         Docker. Docker is a technology for managing containers. Although Docker is usually associated with Linux, Windows Server 2016 provides support for Docker for managing Windows containers and Hyper‑V containers.

·         Rolling upgrades for Hyper‑V and storage clusters. These upgrades enable you to add Windows Server 2016 nodes to an existing Windows Server 2012 R2 failover cluster. The cluster continues to operate at a Windows Server 2012 R2 functional level until all the nodes are upgraded.

Selecting a suitable Windows Server 2016 edition

You can choose one of several editions of Windows Server 2016. These editions allow organizations to select a version of Windows Server 2016 that best meets their needs, rather than pay for features they do not require. When deploying a server for a specific role, system administrators can save substantially by selecting the appropriate edition. The following table describes the Windows Server 2016 editions.

Edition	Description
Windows Server 2016 Essentials edition	Windows Server 2016 Essentials edition is designed for small businesses. It corresponds to Windows Small Business Server from earlier versions of Windows Server. This edition allows up to 25 users and 50 devices. It supports two processor cores and up to 64 gigabytes (GB) of random access memory (RAM). It does not support many of the features of Windows Server 2016, including virtualization.
Windows Server 2016 Standard edition	Windows Server 2016 Standard edition is designed for physical server environments with little or no virtualization. It provides many of the roles and features available for the Windows Server 2016 operating system. This edition supports up to 64 sockets and up to 4 terabytes (TB) of RAM. It includes licenses for up to two virtual machines and supports Nano Server installation.  Note: You can run two virtual machines on one physical host, using one standard license, as long as the physical host is only used for hosting and managing the virtual machines. If the physical host is used to run other services, such as DNS, you can only run one virtual machine. For more information about Windows licensing, speak with a Microsoft licensing specialist.
Windows Server 2016 Datacenter edition	Windows Server 2016 Datacenter edition is designed for highly virtualized infrastructures, including private cloud and hybrid cloud environments. It provides all of the roles and features available for the Windows Server 2016 operating system. This edition supports up to 64 sockets, up to 640 processor cores, and up to 4 TB of RAM. It includes unlimited Windows Server-based virtual machine licenses for virtual machines that run on the same hardware. It also includes new features such as Storage Spaces Direct and Storage Replica, along with new Shielded Virtual Machines and features for software-defined datacenter scenarios.
Microsoft Hyper‑V Server 2016	Acts as a stand-alone virtualization server for virtual machines, including all the new features around virtualization in Windows Server 2016. The host operating system has no licensing cost, but virtual machines must be licensed separately. This edition supports up to 64 sockets and up to 4 TB of RAM. It supports domain joining. It does not support Windows Server 2016 roles other than limited file service features. This edition has no GUI but does have a UI that displays a menu of configuration tasks.
Windows Storage Server 2016 Workgroup edition	Acts as an entry-level unified storage appliance. This edition allows 50 users, one processor core, and 32 GB of RAM. It supports domain joining.
Windows Storage Server 2016 Standard edition	Supports up to 64 sockets but is licensed on a two-socket, incrementing basis. This edition supports up to 4 TB of RAM. It includes two virtual machine licenses. It supports domain joining. It supports some roles, including Domain Name System (DNS) and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server roles, but does not support others, including Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS), or Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS).