What's Hot, August 2006

Get Exchange Management Off Your Hands
Zenprise SMB

The IT pros for most small-tomidsized businesses (SMBs) face the difficult task of keeping their company's systems and applications up and running with a limited IT staff. John Shaffer of New York is no exception. One of his tasks was to manage his company's Exchange environment, which spanned the United States and Europe. But Shaffer couldn't focus 24 hours a day on Exchange, and he wasn't educated in some aspects of Exchange. He decided he needed an Exchange management solution, and he found it with Zenprise SMB. "In the past we've used consultants to address our problems, but Zenprise provides all that expertise wrapped up in a package," says Shaffer. "The product looks at all the aspects of Exchange and provides me with exactly what I need to know to resolve a problem."

Zenprise SMB continually analyzes a customer's Exchange environment to identify the causes of performance, reliability, and availability problems. In addition, the product provides predictive information to help prevent problems from occurring. Pricing for Zenprise SMB starts at $2500 for up to 50 users.

Get Control of File Permissions
ScriptLogic's Enterprise Security Reporter

Although Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations are clear about what's required for compliance, they don't prescribe the necessary tools. For Jeff Westphal, Gerry Sempf, and Joe Daley of West Allis, Wisconsin, meeting HIPAA regulations was a new challenge. Not only did Daley and his team discover they didn't have the network administrative tools they needed to comply with the regulations, but there was no system in place to restrict users from accessing confidential patient information. ScriptLogic's Enterprise Security Reporter helped them resolve their regulatory nightmare.

Using Enterprise Security Reporter's file permission reports together with group membership analysis, Daley, Westphal, and Sempf can immediately see who has access to specific files. Using this information, they reassigned permissions so that only authorized people can gain access to confidential material. With the permissions straightened out, the IT staff now uses Enterprise Security Reporter to continually audit and review permissions on file servers. "The change in my time before using Enterprise Security Reporter to now is like the difference between night and day," says Westphal. Pricing for Enterprise Security Reporter starts at $749.

Identify Inactive Computers in Your Domain
joeware.net's OldCmp

Doug Adams of Columbus, Ohio, manages an IT infrastructure that allows individuals to add—but not delete—PCs to the domain. This situation left Adams with an abundant supply of computer accounts on the domain that were no longer active. While looking for a tool to help identify dormant accounts, Adams found OldCmp from joeware.net. OldCmp is a command-line Active Directory (AD) query tool used to find computer accounts that haven't been used in a specified amount of time. With OldCmp, Adams could locate old computer accounts by specifying the length of time since the account's password had been changed. "Within a very short time, we had all our dormant accounts identified, disabled, and deleted," says Adams. "OldCmp also works with user accounts, and we now use it as part of our quarterly clean-up process."

OldCmp is also a reporting tool. After you run the product, it reports the results in delimited-text, HTML, or Dynamic HTML (DHTML) format. "This tool is an incredible time-saver and a musthave for anyone looking to identify inactive computers or user accounts. And best of all, it's free!" says Adams.

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