Real World Computing

Yesterday, I posted about attending a Domino Jam for the first time in six years and my feelings on how HCL has turned the product around. Today I want to touch on the security aspect discussed at the Jam and add my thoughts to the mix.  Secure by Design Immediately following the roadmap presentation, the jam looked at Domino's legacy and where it is today. One of the key takeaways from this was a discussion of the incredible security in Domino. We have seen this in our organization but it was nice to hear HCL and other organizations (via quotes and stories) saying the same thing. There are many good reasons for the high security score but two of the best are  Multi-layered security from the very beginning of the product. Domino being "on-prem" rather than web hosted.  There were a couple of interesting stories and observations, including one about a penetration test on one of the new tools (Volt) where the auditors talked about the many layers of security in the Domino ...

So, once again Microsoft's Patch Tuesday is breaking all records and we're in a quandry. We can either accept the risk of applying 28 untested (by us) patches to fix 49 vulnerabilities or we can accept the security risks of not applying the patches. Both choices are difficult but in the end, I'm always going to accept the "upgrade risk" versus the "security risk". Gone are the old days So, why don't we just delay it a bit and test it all out? In the old days (and certainly in a much larger company) this would have been possible but right now, we only have a small IT department and a constantly shifting Standard Operating Environment (SOE). As I've said before - there is no longer such a thing as a SOE in today's computing environment. We start out with an idea of the software to be loaded and the options and location in which it gets loaded, that's standard. Then, all the applications upgrade themselves at different intervals and sudde...

Installing Domino 8.0.2 Yesterday, we did some tests on Domino 8.0.2. I wasn't expecting any real problems given the ease of the last few Domino upgrades - up to 7.0.2. I guess I was wrong. First of all, the initial attempt at installation failed with one of those non-specific error messages. I rebooted the server and tried again - no problems. I've seen this problem a few times though - it's something to do with the JVM being held open on Windows Server 2003 even though Domino itself has been closed. Upon starting Domino, I chose not to upgrade the designs of the databases. Ideally you should not upgrade the designs until your last production server is on at least the same "major" version - in this case, 8.x. I then did a bit of testing. As usual, I found no problems. Domino is one of the few systems I know which can be upgraded and tested (albeit roughly) in 15 minutes. The Problem Then I found the problem. Our most critical database refused to render web ...