Tag: Monitor

  • Monitor. Detect. Alert. It’s worth the effort.

    Let’s talk about monitoring and alerting. 

    First – what is it? Simply put, monitoring and alerting is the ability to detect a suspicious incident and notify the appropriate team members who can decide what type and level of response is necessary.

    However, your monitoring and alerting system isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it component of your overall cybersecurity posture. It’s not quick and easy, but it is essential. Without properly tuned filters and someone who knows how to digest the information and react appropriately, malicious actors can slip inside your network without your knowledge. 

    As Brian discusses, monitoring and alerting take time, experience, and ongoing testing to get right. 

    At Raxis, our penetration testing not only tests for vulnerabilities, but we also test a company’s ability to detect an attack or exploit attempt. When we test, we do so in an escalating manner that allows us to determine at what threshold detection occurs. This in turns allows our clients to see how effective (or not) their monitoring is and modify their protocols accordingly.

    Download our list of Top 10 Cyber Attacks to learn more about ways to secure your company.

    Want to learn more? Take a look at the next part of our Common Vulnerabilities discussion.

  • Dual LG 5K Monitors on the 2016 MacBook Pro

    The new LG UltraFine 5K monitors with the USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports are simply amazing. A perfect match for the 2016 MacBook Pro with TouchBar.

    Unfortunately, I lost a little time trying to set them up as they had worked once using both of the ports on the right side of the MacBook Pro. Then, one monitor stopped working. It was always the 5K monitor that I plugged in second, leaving me with the use of only one monitor. Even after a reboot, only one of the monitors would work.  

    I spent time on Google and Apple’s website trying to figure it out with zero luck, and then went on a tangent deleting plist files, clearing the PRAM, reseting the SMC, and trying to manually adjust monitor settings from the command line. No, you don’t need any of that.Even though it’s not all that related, I’m posting this on our information security blog with hopes that I save someone some trouble setting them up. It’s really simple – there are two Thunderbolt 3 buses on the new MacBook Pro. The two ports on the left create bus 0, and the two ports on the right create bus 1. You can see the currently connected devices in the System Information utility. Connect one of your 5K monitors to one bus, and the 2nd one to the other bus. Problem solved. For some reason I thought the port configuration was different, and I do think it would be nicer to have both bus 0 and 1 on each side of the machine so the cables would be more organized. Oh well.

    System Information reporting Thunderbolt 3 Bus connections

    I still don’t know why both monitors worked on one bus before. I didn’t use it that way very long, so I’m guessing it somehow was setup in 4K resolution. The Mac Pro works the same way, there are actually three Thunderbolt 2 buses on the system.In case anyone was wondering, I took the background images myself from Tortola and the Baths on a Canon 5D Mark III fitted with an L Series 28-135mm F/4 lens. They look simply amazing in 5K. Anyway, hopefully this helps someone!