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Orin Thomas

Orin Thomas is a contributing editor for Windows IT Pro and a Windows Security MVP. He has authored or coauthored more than a dozen books for Microsoft Press, and he writes the Hyperbole, Embellishment, and System Administration Blog.

Email: orin@windowsitpro.com

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Author Articles

Piracy and Consumerization/BYOD

By Orin Thomas, 02/07/2012

: @orinthomas It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone to learn that the personal computers of a lot of people have what might be delicately termed "software sourced through ...

Data retention and 17th century aphorisms

By Orin Thomas, 01/29/2012

: @orinthomas “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him” Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642) News ...

More Mobile Malware

By Orin Thomas, 01/28/2012

: @orinthomas This week anti-malware vendor Symantec announced the discovery of 13 different malware laden apps from 3 different publishers in the Android Market. Traditionally ...

How do you secure BYO Device?

By Orin Thomas, 01/22/2012

: @orinthomas There’s a joke I heard that went “making something more secure makes it more inconvenient, so the more inconvenient you make something, the more secure it gets.” ...

TOR Client Software Found on 13% of Enterprise Networks

By Orin Thomas, 01/20/2012

: @orinthomas Security Vendor Palo Alto Networks monitored a week’s worth of traffic traversing the internet gateways of 1,636 businesses each of which had at least 2,500 users ...

Understanding System Center Orchestrator 2012

By Orin Thomas, 01/18/2012

Use this new member of System Center to automate day-to-day systems administration tasks.

It’s just a matter of when: Context aware twitter malware/spam

By Orin Thomas, 01/04/2012

: @orinthomas Twitter malware and spam uses a pretty straightforward attack vector. You get a twitter message from an account (usually with an attractive female avatar) ...

Windows Defender, Windows 8, and Trial Anti-Malware applications.

By Orin Thomas, 01/03/2012

: @orinthomas Windows 8 will include an improved version of the Windows Defender anti-malware software ...

Why do people let their anti-malware subscriptions expire?

By Orin Thomas, 12/31/2011

: @orinthomas It’s pretty difficult to get figures on is the number of computers out there that don’t have any form of anti-malware software deployed. For example, Microsoft’s ...

Why MS11-100 was Out Of Band

By Orin Thomas, 12/30/2011

: @orinthomas According to the recent OOB Bulletin Q&A and Webcast, MS11-100 was pushed out because exploiting the vulnerability in a denial of service attack was relatively ...

Little Known Feature: IE9 Tracking Protection

By Orin Thomas, 12/30/2011

: @orinthomas Internet Explorer 9 Tracking Protection is an updated form of InPrivate Filtering. InPrivate Filtering was a little known mode in IE 8 that allowed you to block ...

IT Security Predictions for 2012

By Orin Thomas, 12/29/2011

: @orinthomas As Dilbert author Scott Adams once said, the great thing about predicting the future is that if you’re right you can point back to your initial prediction and ...

Picture Passwords: Alternative or Gimmick?

By Orin Thomas, 12/28/2011

: @orinthomas If you’ve used a tablet running Windows for a while, you’ll know that logging on with a complex password involving 8 or more letters, numbers, and symbols gets ...

Patching without testing: Risky or Rational?

By Orin Thomas, 12/28/2011

: @orinthomas Earlier this year I was teaching a Configuration Manager class and we were discussing software update testing before deployment. I asked members of the class how ...

Why A Mobile Device Operating System’s Security Model is important

By Orin Thomas, 12/28/2011

: @orinthomas Mobile Phones are beginning to hold more of our life than Computers do. Mobile phone operating systems are also starting to get the sort of attention from hackers ...

Product Review: Enterprise Random Password Manager

By Orin Thomas, 12/17/2011

Centralize—and improve—the management of privileged account passwords with this comprehensive tool, but be ready for a bit of culture shock.

Mobile device anti-malware

By Orin Thomas, 11/30/2011

: @orinthomas Will your phone need an anti-malware app? Mobile device security has been in the news constantly of late. From some who claim that the Android platform is where ...

IT revenge stories should scare you into updating your security procedures

By Orin Thomas, 11/18/2011

: @orinthomas Cracked.com is a humor site, but it’s recent story Revenge of the IT Guy details five instances where someone who had been fired from the company was able to carry ...

New Microsoft Security Essentials Beta program open

By Orin Thomas, 11/18/2011

twitter: @orinthomas If you are interested in the future of Microsoft’s end user consumer security product, which has become very popular because it is both (1) effective and (2) ...

Digitally signed Malware: May we live in interesting times

By Orin Thomas, 11/14/2011

-twitter: @orinthomas According to a recent post on the F-Secure blog – they’ve found malware that was signed using a code signing certificate from a CA owned by the Malaysian ...



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