Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!

In the latest Security Swarm Podcast: “Summer Olympics 2024: How and Why Threat Actors Target the Games,” we discuss the cybersecurity implications of the upcoming 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, France. The conversation explores how the geopolitical landscape, with ongoing global tensions and conflicts, creates a high-profile stage that threat actors may target for hacktivism, financial gain, or destabilization.

We’re looking for favorite tips and tools we can share with the community… those that help you do your job better and more easily. Please share your suggestions on the IT Pro Tuesday subreddit, and we’ll be featuring them in the coming weeks.

Now on to this week’s list!

A Free Tool

The Judge is a handy online AI tool that can assess the tone of a block of text and suggest a suitable response. It’s a quick way to be sure you aren’t misinterpreting what someone else has written or save you from sending out something that will cause trouble. Zenie appreciates it “for responding to dumb emails. Check if I’m coming off crass or not.”

External Attack Surface Management Attack Surface Summary

A Tutorial

CrowdStrike IT Outage Explained by a Windows Developer provides a concise post-mortem on exactly what led to this week’s global tech mess. Windows expert David Plummer walks you through exactly what happened and why. Techguyeric1 raves, “Great video.”

External Attack Surface Management Attack Surface Summary

Another Free Tool

New Recovery Tool to help with CrowdStrike issue impacting Windows endpoints covers the details on how to make use of Microsoft’s own recovery tool, including detailed recovery steps for Windows client, servers, and OS’s hosted on Hyper-V.

A Tip

A time-saver preferred by JaJe92 for occasions when the taskbar is unresponsive: 

taskkill explorer.exe /f & explorer.exe

to only restart it instead of restarting the whole computer.

A YouTube Channel

Wolfgang’s Channel offers videos aimed at making your tech experience more productive and less intrusive. You’ll find how-tos, reviews, and tutorials on open-source software, privacy-friendly services, and other technology topics. Our thanks for the suggestion go to Scipio11.

External Attack Surface Management Attack Surface Summary

P.S. Bonus Free Tools

Simplewall is an open-source connection blocker and firewall that offers real-time protection of connected devices. Hellsomecr appreciates that it, “Allows me to give or deny internet access to the apps I wish.”

Sway allows you to arrange application windows logically, rather than spatially. This tiling Wayland compositor and drop-in replacement for the i3 window manager for X11 works with the existing i3 configuration and supports most of i3’s features, plus a few extras. Kindly suggested by  doglar_666.