LANDesk is working to give the Mac users the same abilities as the Windows users in LANDesk Management Suite . In SP1 LANDesk made some really great changes, one of which is the ability to Remote Control the Mac’s via the LANDesk Management Gateway.

The process is easy, once the agent is updated;

· Run the LANDesk Management Gateway.app in the /applications/utilities folder

· The LANDesk Management Gateway dialog box appears, unlock it,

· Enter in you Domain name,

· Enter a LANDesk Management Suite user and password in the boxes. Remember not a Gateway user.

· Press the test button, you should see the test log box appear letting you know it connected successfully,

· Next press the Request button, the Broker Configuration dialog box will appear letting you know the update was successful.

The Mac is now configured for the Gateway. Open the Management Suite Console, select the Mac from the All Devices list, right click and select Remote Control via the Management Gateway. Once you logon in to the Gateway Console you should see you Mac in the Start Connection list, select it and connect.

That’s all there is to it, quick and simple.

Andy

All too often organizations think of a firewall as a single tool instead of a strategy.  Many use perimeter firewalls as the only protection for their environment. However a single solution of a perimeter firewall solution is insufficient.  Even if your environment only had PCs and Servers, what about the Smart Phones that connect to the Internet while they are in your office???

                Many IT staff just doesn’t want to mess with local firewalls on PCs and laptops because they are just too hard to manage. Each firewall needs to be configured individual, the end user can turn it off, there is no central management, and the list goes on of why a firewall isn’t used.

                With the LANDesk Firewall the IT staff can centrally manage one or thousands of firewalls on PCs and laptops.  Do you need different configurations?  Sales will need different settings from the Executives who will need different settings from Accounting and on and on. The centrally managed LANDesk Firewall can easily manage multiple configurations.  Additionally if the IT Staff needs to make a change, the need to personally visit the device is no longer needed; all the IT staff needs to do is make the firewall changes, then schedule the update to the devices.

                Whether you use the LANDesk or Windows Firewall the LANDesk agent is the place to start, just put a check in the box, and then update the agents. The LANDesk Firewall can be used it on Windows XP, Vista, 7, Server 2003 and Server 2008.  Some of the key features are:

· Automatic / Background switching

· “Learn” allowing current configurations and trusted applications to continue to run

· Allow or Deny access to in and / or out bound applications

· Allow or Deny access to in and / or out bond ports

· Ability to lean and trust “current” subnet (rather than the administrator having to enumerate each machine’s subnet)

· Log Firewall violations

· Settings and Configurations can be integrated into the Agent Configuration, and can lock-down the client User Interface

· All of the Core Server’s trusted networks are automatically added to the list of trusted IP ranges.

Location-Awareness has got to be one of the coolest features with the LANDesk Firewall.  Inside your office your IT staff has strong defenses to protect the user’s device, so you can relax the local firewall settings. But what happens when the Sales associate travels?  Without any action by the IT staff or the end users Location-Awareness knows it’s no longer attached to a trusted network and turns up the security features to protect the device.

The bottom line is we need to protect the devices that connect to networks or the Internet.  The LANDesk Firewall is a strong start for complete Endpoint Security.  Take a look at it, if you have any questions let me know.

Andy

Tampa Florida Seminar

Achieve the next milestone...Aligning IT business management processes requires transforming rough objectives into strategic, measurable goals. How do you close the gap to realize quantitative success?

Join Network America & LANDesk Software for the IT Business Management Workshop - to learn, share and adopt effective service management for your company. LANDesk, an award-winning leader in enterprise management software, will be sharing the proven framework for aligning business and best practices for IT Service Management.

Discussion Topics Include:

Event Information:

July 15, 2010
11 am - 2pm EST
Maggiano's at Westshore Mall
Tampa, Florida

Please RSVP as seating is limited, please follow this link to register: http://www.ldms.com/company/events/service_desk_optimization/itbm_workshop_form.html

LANDesk Service Desk combines ITIL-verified, process-driven incident, problem, and change and configuration management, in a single touch point. With Pink Verify in 14 Processes, LANDesk Service Desk delivers out-of-the-box, configurable solutions that enable you to integrate with existing enterprise management systems and introduce process automation to move from a reactive state to a controlled, service-oriented approach that results in IT business alignment. Its flexible, modular Maturity Model approach enables you to implement the solution at your own pace and according to your current status and goals.

Look forward to seeing you next month,

Mark M. NAI

Certified LANDesk Service Desk Product Expert

Is your organization prepared for a detailed audit? Creating and implementing an effective asset management strategy ensures that your business gets the most from your IT investments.

Discussion Topics will include:

Who should attend: This workshop is a  business-oriented discussions that address topics of interest to Information Technology decision makers, Compliance, Procurement and Supply Chain Management, Corporate Finance, Human Resources and Legal Council.

When: Wednesday June 23 from 11:00 AM– 2:00 PM EST, Lunch will be provided.

RSVP: To keep the executive workshop interactive and intimate, seating is limited, so register as soon as possible.

http://www.ldms.com/company/events/executive_overview/asset_management_workshop_form.html

For more information or questions please email us @

Have a great weekend!

Susie

Intuitive and easy to use, LANDesk Service Desk also has all the expected call logging
functionality and much more, freeing up support staff from incident administration so they can
focus their time more effectively.

LANDesk® Service Desk combines ITIL-verified, process-driven incident, problem, and change and configuration management, in a single touch point.

Enabling you too:

• Deliver cost-effective, quality IT services 
• Improve resolution rates and minimize recurring incidents
• Enforce standardization and enable process automation with a configurable process engine
• Support best practices such as ITIL
• Gain clarity and control over service levels 
• Provide effective management reporting
• Seamlessly integrate with leading enterprise management systems—including LANDesk^® Management Suite
• Extend best-practice processes and workflows to other parts of the business

Join us to see LANDesk Service Desk webinar on May25th at 2pm where we will show you how to significantly drop your response times and to discuss the advantages of creating a results-oriented service desk.

LANDesk Service Desk is PinkVERIFY™ certified for ITIL v2 and ITIL v3 support, including all 14 certification processes that make up ITIL v3. With strong self service integration, graphical dashboard, customer satisfaction tracking, and service levels. 

To register for our upcoming webinar please follow this link:

http://www.ldms.com/Company/events/service_Desk/landesk_service_desk_0525_form.html

Or if you would like to arrange a demonstration for another day or time, please email us

Have a great weekend!

Susie

SP4 for LANDesk Management Suite and LANDesk Security Suite 8.8 is scheduled for release April 30, 2010. Key features include:

• Client support for Windows 7 (32- and 64-bit)
• Hot patches for 8.8 discovered since SP3
• OSD/provisioning support for Windows 7
• Client support for Windows Server 2008 R2
• Intel AMT 6.0 support
• AV engine (SDK 8) support for 8.8
• Client support for Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) (originally released February 19, 2010)
• Buffer overflow protection for HIPS

A detailed list of features and fixes will be available April 30 in a readme document at http://community.landesk.com/support/docs/DOC-1001.

For more information on LANDesk please contact us at .

Or join us for an online demo to see Management Suite in action on May 19th, LANDesk Management Suite webinar

Have a great weekend!

Susie

Please join us  for an informative Windows 7 migration seminar and private movie screening of Iron Man 2 on Friday, May 7^th at the Plaza Cinema Café in Orlando.

Discussion Topics Include:

» Inventory Reporting Techniques for Business Intelligence

» Evaluating System Readiness - Including Hardware and Application Compatibility

» Imaging for Multiple Hardware Platform

» Operating System Migration and Deployment Techniques - Reduce Down-Time and Maintain User Settings

Immediately after the seminar, you're invited to stay for a private screening of the movie, Iron Man 2. Breakfast and concessions will be provided for all attendees.

Registration is required

To sign-up visit: http://www.ldms.com/Company/events.html

Let’s take a peek into creating custom (or user-defined) definitions, complete with custom detection rules, associated patch files, and special additional commands to ensure successful remediation of those highly used but unique applications. This tool is located in the Patch and Compliance section of the LANDesk Security and Compliance module.

Vulnerability definitions consist of a unique ID, title; publish date, language, and other identifying information, as well as the detection rules that tell the security scanner what to look for on the target devices. Detection rules define the specific platform, application, file, or registry conditions that the security scanner checks for in order to detect the vulnerability (or just about practically ANY system condition or status) on scanned devices.

Custom vulnerability definitions are a powerful, flexible tool that lets you implement an additional, proprietary level of patch security on your environment. Suppose you use a homegrown in-house application that needs to be updated. Using custom definitions, it assesses the system configurations, checks for specific file and registry settings, and deploys application updates.

Custom definitions don't necessarily have to perform remediation actions (deploying and installing patch files). If the custom definition is defined with a Detect Only detection rule or rules the security scanner looks at target devices and simply reports back the devices where the rule's prescribed condition (i.e., vulnerability) is found. For example, you can write a custom “Detect Only” rule for the security scanner to check managed devices for the following:

· Application existence

· File existence

· File version

· File location

· File date

· Registry setting

· And more...

To learn more about LANDesk Management Suite, join us for a webinar on May 19^th.

LANDesk’s Security Suite V9 offers you greater flexibility with Endpoint Security, patching and automation to take some of the headaches away from managing the patching of the PCs and OS.

Unlike WSUS, which only covers security updates for Microsoft applications, LANDesk Patch Manager provides additional software patch management for other applications such as Adobe.

Let’s take a quick look at Patch Manager. Traditionally, you’ll schedule the download of patches and updates for Microsoft, Adobe, Mozilla, Yahoo, etc.. Once you have the definitions downloaded, you’ll scan the PCs to find out that they need. Next you’ll push the patches to the PCs and set the patches to autofix.  Autofix will patch the PCs as it finds the missing patches, during the vulnerability scan. This is a sound and simple process of keeping your PCs up to date. 

However…

There is an often over looked process in LANDesk Patch Manager that lets you automate software patch management. LANDesk Process Manager for Patch lets you configure a workflow that:

• Alerts when the patches are available and/or downloaded

• Tracking and audit trails of all of the events

• Processes to speed the approvals and deployment

• Testing and notifications of successes/failures

• Deployment to configurations

To see more of LANDesk Security Suite and its protection capabilities, join us on May 13th at 2pm EST for a free online webinar.

Information on LANDesk Management Suite (LDMS)
LANDesk Management Suite - gives you all the control you need—no matter how big or diverse your environment—to address IT concerns in the 21st century. It enables you to discover devices in your network and store information on its configurations, OS, processor speed, installed memory, hard drive capacity, loaded applications, and more in a central database that provides powerful reporting functionality.

However, LDMS can run into issues with other applications that use too much memory at log-on. This LANDesk technical blog is provided by Network America, a certified platinum services and solutions partner for 13 consecutive years. If you have questions on this information or other error messages, please contact us at 877.624.8311.

"All Required Services have not started" - If you haven't seen this error message or this one - "Not all required services have started. If you have just rebooted, please wait a few minutes" - consider yourself lucky. These messages are caused by the boot-up resource hogs, AMP, Java, Anti-Virus and other applications. However there are a few things that can be done to minimize nuisance messages:

1. Make sure the server exceeds the minimum requirements for the size of your environment.

2. If your server is "memory-challenged," you can make it run more efficiently and reduce the time AMP, Java and the others need to finish their start-up:

· Check the SQL port - the default LANDesk port is 1433

· Click "Start" > "Programs" > "Microsoft SQL Server" > "Configuration Tools" > "SQL Server Configuration Manager"

· Open SQL Server Network Configuration and click "Protocols for LDMSDATA"

· In the right hand pane, double-click TCP/IP, and go to the IP Addresses Tab

· Scroll down and find the value for TCP Dynamic Ports. This will show the SQL port. If it is not using 1433, change it.

· Stop and start the SQL service to complete the change.

This will help with the console logon and it will also help when you configure the Jaspersoft iReport tool for reporting.

3. Uninstall the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration as this will decrease the time it takes to log on.

4. If you have a firewall enabled, turn it off. However, if you have to have it turned on, then make sure AMP can communicate on port 8092. From a web browser, enter https://YourCoreServer:8092. You should see Error 404 – Not Found, as well as a list of LANDesk files. For example:

· https://YourCoreServer:8092/LicensingService

· https://YourCoreServer:8092/ampquarts

This way, you know that it is communicating via port 8092.