Patching & VulnerabilitiesTutorial
Windows Update rings for a ~40 PC office
How to split a small fleet into pilot and production rings so Patch Tuesday does not become a company-wide outage.
Michael Narehood3 min read
Line-of-business apps and unsupported Windows
How to move a critical line-of-business application off unsupported Windows without breaking the workflow the business depends on.
Michael Narehood6 min read
When to force SSO for business SaaS
Single sign-on is not free to roll out — but neither is password sprawl. How SMBs decide which apps get SSO enforced and which can wait.
Michael Narehood3 min read
MDM for company iPhones without the enterprise theater
A practical iPhone management baseline for small businesses: ownership, enrollment, passcodes, updates, managed apps, loss, and offboarding.
Michael Narehood5 min read
Teams lobby settings for external meetings
Who waits in the lobby, who walks straight in, and how to keep client calls from turning into open doors — a practical Teams policy pass for SMBs.
Michael Narehood3 min read
Google Workspace security baseline for small teams
A practical Google Workspace baseline for 10-50 users: enforced 2-Step Verification, safer administrators, controlled sharing, OAuth review, devices, and alerts.
Michael Narehood6 min read
RMM alert fatigue: what to silence
When your PSA is full of noise, operators stop seeing real incidents. A practical filter list for SMB RMM alerting.
Michael Narehood3 min read
SecurityTutorial
BitLocker recovery keys: where they should live
A practical escrow plan for BitLocker recovery keys in small businesses — so a lost PIN does not become a full disk wipe.
Michael Narehood3 min read
Identity & AccessTutorial
Break-glass admin accounts that actually work
How to create and maintain emergency Microsoft 365 admin accounts so you can recover the tenant without leaving a permanent backdoor.
Michael Narehood3 min read
Identity & AccessTutorial
Windows LAPS for SMB local admin passwords
How small offices rotate and escrow local administrator passwords with Windows LAPS through Intune — without a spreadsheet of doom on every workstation.
Michael Narehood3 min read
Chrome zero-day patch habits for small offices
Emergency browser updates do not wait for Patch Tuesday. How SMBs should force Chrome updates, control extensions, and close the relaunch gap before attackers do.
Michael Narehood5 min read
AI IDEs for ops scripts: useful drafts, dangerous shortcuts
Cursor and similar tools can speed up PowerShell and bash work for MSPs, but only if you review output, protect secrets, and treat suggestions as starting points.
Michael Narehood5 min read
Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin): what's new and when to use it
Ubuntu 25.04 shipped in April 2025 with GNOME 48, Linux 6.14, and refreshed toolchains. Here's when it fits your lab versus staying on 24.04 LTS.
Michael Narehood5 min read
Copilot for Microsoft 365 in SMB reality
What Copilot actually costs, how it uses your tenant data, and when it helps small teams versus generating expensive drafts nobody trusts.
Michael Narehood5 min read
When Cloudflare Workers makes sense for small teams
Workers can replace a surprising amount of API and edge logic, but it is not a default for every app. A practical guide to when serverless at the edge beats traditional hosting.
Michael Narehood6 min read
DeepSeek R1 and the open-weight reasoning wave
DeepSeek's R1 models got ops and dev teams paying attention. Here is why, plus sober notes on local vs API use and why client data does not belong in random endpoints.
Michael Narehood5 min read
Apple Intelligence on work iPhones and Macs
Apple Intelligence landed in late 2024 with on-device models and Private Cloud Compute. What MDM admins should decide before enabling it on managed devices.
Michael Narehood5 min read
Vates Announces the General Release of XCP-ng 8.3
An overview of XCP-ng 8.3: updated Xen and kernel stack, security and performance improvements, LTS direction, install/upgrade notes, and what to check before you move.
Michael Narehood3 min read
Windows 11 24H2 upgrade planning for SMBs
Microsoft's 2024 feature update is not a click-and-forget release. Pilot rings, app friction, and how to avoid surprise broad enablement on busy fleets.
Michael Narehood4 min read
LinuxTutorial
How to install Xen Orchestra for XCP-ng
What Xen Orchestra is, why Xen Tools matter, the VM sizing to use, and a straightforward path to install XO for managing your XCP-ng hosts.
Michael Narehood3 min read
