Hello folks,

Today I have two good news about our upcoming Windows Server 2012 Security Book. Last month Deb Shinder joined us as a co-author of this book, she is already producing some great piece of content and we are just very happy to have her onboard. The other good news is that we reached 70% of the book, we are getting very close to the end (probably will be done writing by December).

If you are playing around with SMB3 and is trying to find more details on network traffic using Microsoft Network Monitor you may find out that SMB3 is not on the protocol’s list as shown below:

Before moving forward, it is important to emphasize that this behavior is expected. There are a couple of thing that you need to understand about this:

• You need to download the latest protocol parsers (at least version 2890) in order to parse SMB3 protocol. For that go to http://connect.microsoft.com , click Message Analyzer, Network Monitor and Protocol Suites and download the latest version from there.
• Even after installing the latest parse you will NOT see protocol.SMB3 in the list (expected). You should use SMB2 and it will parse SMB3 protocol using the latest parser.

More info about Protocol parse see http://blogs.technet.com/netmon and for more information about SMB 3 Protocol specification see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc246482%28prot.20%29.aspx

Today at RSA Conference in Europe, Microsoft launched the Cloud Security Reediness Tool. Here how it works:

Go check it out now at: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/jj554736

Today Josh Adams published at the TechNet Gallery two great set of PowerShell scripts that can help you automating your Windows Server 2012 Cloud Infrastructure. Check it out what each one does:

• Windows Server 2012 IaaS Build Tables: Step-by-Step with PowerShell Examples : over 70 different PowerShell cmdlets are employed and described, many leveraging new features only found in Windows Server 2012, covering areas such as: Networking (NIC Teaming, QoS, DCB, etc.), Failover Clustering, Hyper-V , Storage Spaces, Disk Management (including MPIO), Server Management, Active Directory and PowerShell.
• SMB Share Configuration for Hyper-V Workloads : enable separate scaling of compute and storage resources, specific permissions are added to both the file system and share levels, it enables remote management of the solution along with and Kerberos-constrained Live Migration and more.

We hope you enjoy!

Note: make sure to rate and leave your comment on each one of those articles.

I’m not sure if you notice, but the Windows 8 Security Guide is already available:

It comes with the SCM 3.0 Beta (watch this interview for more information on SCM 3.0 Beta) and download it from here. Once you install this tool, browse through the path below and download the DOC file:

Note: the Windows Server2012 Security Guide is also there, under Windows Server 2012 option.

Enjoy!

Last September 29th Microsoft updated the definitions to 1.137.726.0 by adding support detection for the Trojan Win32/Sofilblock.A. At any point in time if you face the screen below do not proceed with payment process. Update your Microsoft antivirus for the latest definition, scan your computer and remove the threat.

Image Source: Microsoft Malware Protection Center Facebook Page.