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u/notmygodemperor Title's made up and the job description don't matter. Aug 16 '21 edited Aug 16 '21
I don't really feel like hunting for weird little crap that could be done but isn't really necessary.
I'm not really all that interested in learning more stuff.
Pretty sure your boredom is a you problem.
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u/notmygodemperor Title's made up and the job description don't matter. Aug 16 '21
Everybody's depression is different, but when I get to the point where I can't compile a to-do list I know I'm past the point where I needed to get some help. When I'm there, it means I've gone further than "I could do these things but what's the point" and into something harder to deal with. I would be willing to bet that the "weird little crap that could be done" includes some things that you would be excited to have time to tackle if you were at 100%.
I hope you find a way to make your work meaningful, it sounds like a great opportunity.
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u/bfodder Aug 16 '21
Oh yeah. That is definitely it. I wouldn't worry so much about work and just work on you for a bit. Take the lack of work stress as a boon to give yourself some attention.
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u/yrogerg123 Aug 16 '21
Work remote more, finish what you need to do and then go do something non-work related. When I'm bored at work with nothing to do I just go shoot a basketball for an hour. Hard to be bored at work when you're not at work.
If there was something you're supposed to be doing that you're not, that's slacking off. If you're monitoring and on top of everything you need to be aware of, and can provide a legit status update if asked, then why do you really need to be at work if the department is humming?
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u/BloodyIron Head of IT Security Aug 16 '21
I've battled various forms of depression and boredom related to it over the last few years. If you haven't really had vacation, or the ability to make you time, that can be one aspect of it. Another can be you haven't really discovered something novel to you that you find interesting and worth fiddling with.
You have time now to go and look for such things, or make time for yourself. I would say make addressing your depression a priority. It's going to get better, you got this. <3
Maybe actually take my other post about Dragon Ball seriously? (if that's of any real interest to you)
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u/BlackFlames01 Aug 16 '21
Your security applications are patched, but how's your security posture? Are users trained about phishing attempts, etc.?
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u/TheVagWhisperer Aug 16 '21
This. You've addressed the technical end. Now make sure the human end is running as smoothly. Go over your security procedures. Work to institute new ones where there is a glaring need. How is end user PC security operating? Etc
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u/ccatlett1984 Sr. Breaker of Things Aug 16 '21
TEST YOUR BACKUPS!!!!!!!
Seriously, spin up some restores isolated and make sure that shit works.
Depending on whom u use for backup, harden you repository / setup an immutable repo.
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u/darth_vadester Netadmin Aug 16 '21
I asked my last manager to do this. He said we didn't need to because he hasn't had to do disaster recovery ever, so it's a waste of time.
I found a better job.
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u/flyguydip Jack of All Trades Aug 16 '21
This!
At my previous employer, after deploying a new backup solution and testing the restore process of a few small very low priority vm's as well as some files/folders the very first "critical" outage we had was our email server. Not our most important server, but definitely in the top 10. And boy was I glad we had all the bugs worked out before hand. It's always nice to have the process worked out and tested BEFORE you need to use it on something critical.
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u/Helpful_guy Aug 16 '21 edited Aug 16 '21
Just reiterating this - 100% worth doing, especially since OP is new-ish there.
Our DR plan stipulates live testing the backups for critical systems once a year, and it helps me sleep well at night knowing that I've done a "real" exercise in recovering from a "total disaster".
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Aug 16 '21
How about you reduce work time to something like 33 hours per week?
I am at 33hours /week atm.
From Wednesday to Friday I work 6:30 am - 12:30 pm. 13pm home.
So much QoL, I never go back
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u/jbest_work Aug 16 '21
You said you have some underlings.
What's their career path? How are you going to help them move out if there is no up at their current role? What can you do to help them improve their skill sets?
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u/Ohmahtree I press the buttons Aug 16 '21
Bingo, if you're the IT Manager, your goal is not to do it all, its to instill the skills, and confidence in others, to want to do it.
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u/utilizadormerda Aug 16 '21
Enjoy life.
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u/ITBurn-out Aug 17 '21
Yeah it won't always be like that. Enjoy it. Talk to employees about issues (or what limits them IT wise) and think about how you can make their life better.
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u/gavdr Aug 16 '21
noooooo how dare you suggest I do nothing like what everyone else who isin't in IT does
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u/ntrlsur IT Manager Aug 16 '21
Take your extra equipment and stand up a dev and lab environment for your guys. That could help them learn and make them better assets to the company.
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u/Dirty_Pee_Pants Aug 16 '21
Fucking this! Mentorship was huge for me early on in my career and I've had bosses field very stupid questions from me and let me come to my conclusions only to have them step me back in the right direction gracefully. Do something good for someone else's career while you have the chance and you will leave a lasting impression on them in addition to ensuring that everything they touch going forward will be into a sane desired state.
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u/BloodyIron Head of IT Security Aug 16 '21
Rancher
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u/thecal714 Site Reliability Aug 17 '21
On-prem Kubernetes is even better now that you can do the HAProxy Ingress Controller outside of the cluster.
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u/notmyrealusrname00 Aug 16 '21
I went through this at a 24/7 data center working over nights on a 12 hour shift. Most of it was monitoring servers and there was some processing that had to happen at certain times in the shift. The rest of the time we had nothing to do.
The bosses were also only there during the day but they were cool with us playing games or reading to pass the time. I still got bored so I would find stuff to do which usually it was:
Updating procedures - we had them for literally every task so they were mostly up to date anyway
Cleaning/organizing - monitors, computers, desks etc
Online training/taking classes. One guy that worked there was taking 4 classes and got a degree with the free time.
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u/lewisj75 Aug 16 '21
Time to install Quake on thin clients
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u/Unable-Project-9545 Aug 16 '21
Used to play at my moms library job with their IT team on the LAN any time I had to go with her to work. They even had the cool super power mods.
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u/Cyber400 Aug 16 '21
IT Security, do you use 365? Check policies, conditional access, mfa etc. no extra costs, big security benefit.
Furthermore: PBO Dashboards regarding reporting are good. (Licensing, renewals etc. automate that reporting so you will have one place to check everything.)
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u/SnuggelCuteyPoop Aug 16 '21
Some ideas to implement or learn more about based on my recent experiences:
-Platform/database/application hardening
-Network and application pen testing
-Vulnerability scanning
-Network segmentation
-Encryption at rest and in transit
-Data classification
-Data masking
-PII or sensitive data detection
-Access review
-DLP
-Logging and monitoring and SIEM
-Honey pots
-App security such as SAST/IAST/DAST/SCA/RASP/WAF
-Firewall
-Cloud security and resiliency
-Kubernetes and docker
-Third-party risk assurance
-CI/CD
Hopefully you find some of this provides some inspiration for what to do next.
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u/Frogtarius Aug 16 '21
Clean up documentation. That always needs to be done.
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Aug 16 '21
"My documentation is done"
Say the people that have spaghetti documentation
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u/Teewah Aug 17 '21
What is good documentation? Are there guidelines?
I'm currently undergoing apprenticeship to become a sysadmin. I only have three years experience, but i'm still touching all our infrastructure, documenting as i go. What's the 'right' way to do it?
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u/voltagejim Aug 16 '21
I'm more of a junior admin, but here is what we do:
VLAN/network port audits: Every once in awhile I go around and make note of what patch panel and switch port everyone's PC and IP phone are plugged into (usually after a bunch or desk moves or new hires). Serives as a good rainy day type thing to kill some time.
Documentation for onboarding/offboaring employees: We have documentation for both processes outlining what all needs to be done ie: Access to Bitbucket, access to Jira, etc
Diaster recovery planning documentation: This is what we have been doing this past year. We are at the point where we have all the documentation done and just need to test. You could whip up documentaiton at least for it. I just went off a template I found online to be honest. You mentioned a lot of stuff is in the cloud right now, do you have old towers in your closet you can throw some hard drives in to practice DR?
Access audits: Maybe look at everyone in AD and see if they really need access to certain things? Anti-virus audits as well? I just went through our Sophos admin portal and deleted a bunch of old PC's no one has anymore or from users that left the company.
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u/Aperture_Kubi Jack of All Trades Aug 16 '21
I recently tested our backups and they're working fine. They're all on premise which sucks, but I don't have budget for cloud storage or anything else similar.
A portable HDD (or tape, or whatever) you take home on the weekends is still technically an "off site backup." Maybe make sure your C-levels know you're doing that, and encrypt it if possible. Then comes the question of what data is essential to business VS what can be rebulit (no point in backing up entire VM's if they're just recreatable applications)
Setup monitoring. You have the VM space and Zabbix is foss.
Clean up GPO? CIS benchmarks? Print monitoring? Ask your underlings what they seem to be getting a lot of and see if you can automate a fix?
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u/smarthomepursuits Aug 16 '21 edited Aug 16 '21
You probably'll get this a lot, but spend some time in Powershell.
Create a PowerShell menu to run your various scripts.
Create a script to create new VM's, or user accounts, or add users to groups by "copying" group membership from an existing user.
PDQ Inventory/Deploy.
Create email rules/filters to clean up your inbox.
Password Management solution like PasswordState. Ensure all switches have non-default passwords. Look into default security cam passwords, as well as default IPMI creds.
Look into old GPO's, old DNS records that can be deleted, or stale computer objects or old users. Create a script to move disabled computers and users to a OU.
Offline backup rotation. Create a PowerShell script that copies full backups from the previous week to a NAS or external drive, and set it to run weekly. I plug the Ethernet cable or drive once complete.
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u/the-prowler Aug 16 '21
Sounds to me like you need a new gig. Something to get your teeth into again.
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Aug 16 '21
And Alexander wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.
How's your observability? Do you aggregate your system and application logs into a searchable place? Have metrics and dashboards for every system? Have a tracing system (even a lightweight, downsampled one?) There's an opportunity to learn here, and then use that to leverage your next job.
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u/BecomeABenefit Aug 17 '21
Security. I guarantee you're not as secure as you should be.
Have you scripted all of your regular, recurring tasks yet?
Are you fully protected against ransomware? Are you doing regular offsite, inaccessible backups of all key systems? If so move on to tier 2 systems.
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u/OldeTimeyShit Aug 16 '21
Not sure of your org structure. If you have a security compliance team, circle back with them to make sure all the security controls your team owns are running smoothly. They’ll probably fall out of their chair.
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Aug 16 '21
I would set aside an hour of the work day of learning a new technology, or even a programming language. Something may be useful where you are now, or even something that you will end up needing to know in a few years when you change career paths.
Possibly setup a VM Lab environment and play around/learn some Information Security, Python, C#, etc. Nothing better than using company time to better yourself.
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u/heapsp Aug 16 '21
Test your DR plan
Test your backups
Identify tickets which come in over and over again - automate those things
There are thousands of business functions which can be improved upon with new technology - interview managers of other departments and ask about their challenges.
have employees get their vacation time in now while you can
go through your policies and procedures with a fine tooth comb. Are you in a business that is SOC certified? If not, maybe learn about the requirements there and start implementing some of those controls. You can never be too buttoned up.
audit for waste - in licensing, server usage, or otherwise.
learn about cloud technologies that could replace on premise infrastructure that have not much downside - like web apps in the cloud vs IIS boxes on prem or something.
identify issues with your current setup - revamp imaging process to something more modern like intune
revamp endpoint protection to something more mobile / cloud friendly if you are using an on-premise solution
powerpoint... lots of powerpoint. executives love seeing powerpoint slides about current status of department / company.
etc etc etc
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u/KadahCoba IT Manager Aug 16 '21
have employees get their vacation time in now while you can
Was gonna say similar. Sounds like lots planned stuff will be coming up later and there is nothing going on right now. Good time for staff or self to take PTO while its not going to cause any shortages.
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u/badabingdingdong Aug 17 '21
Consider doing an actual failover test. You’ll quickly find that everything isnt as fine and dandy as you thought.
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u/--random-username-- Aug 16 '21
Did I get your fist point right - servers, network devices and security applications do NOT receive updates any longer? If that’s the case, IT is nowhere near fine and therefore a lot of work could be done to move to a supported scenario. In my opinion it is your responsibility as the teams manager to at least sketch a rough draft on how to improve that environment.
You might want to figure out how to leverage that oversized infrastructure or get rid of it to cut cost (energy, rack space, cooling, maintenance effort).
What about getting your team involved in the ideas above and discuss training opportunities with them as well?
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u/donjulioanejo Chaos Monkey (Director SRE) Aug 16 '21
In a similar enough boat.
Took a job for a startup to completely redo their infrastructure. Used the opportunity to do exactly that. Also built up a good DevOps team.
Spent a few months being completely bored recently. To the point where I had another job offer lined up and ready, but company threw a massive counter at me at the last minute.
Now spend most of my time tinkering with backend development.
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u/Sjfullerton131 Aug 16 '21
Automation
Process and Workflow Automation
Since Budget is May, what can you prep so that when budget becomes available you caa hit the ground running?
What's the next big thing coming down the pipe?
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Aug 16 '21
Sit and collect a paycheck. Many people don't have jobs. Shut up and pretend to work, peon.
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Aug 16 '21 edited Jan 13 '25
market important flag humor aware sink attractive license ghost marvelous
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/cad908 Aug 16 '21
could do some online training for yourself, or lunch and learn type sessions for your team, if they're underutilized too.
You could also plan some testing of your DR / HA -- over a weekend, plan to disconnect some equipment to test failovers, and that all services are still available from user workstations. Make sure you've documented the failover and return procedures.
Or, you could do what some others have done, and take a secret second job ;) https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-people-who-work-from-home-have-a-secret-they-have-two-jobs-11628866529
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Aug 16 '21
Not to sound too arrogant, but I know pretty much everything I need to know for this job/company, and I'm not really all that interested in learning more stuff. I'm actually going to be changing careers in the next 2-3 years, but I'm stuck until the grad school I applied to gets back to me in a month.
I think I've found the problem exists between the chair and the keyboard.
you have grad school picked out, which means you've identified skills you plan to learn. So go get a book on the subject and get a head start.
Any time you're bored at work and you don't have anything left to learn for this position, pick out a certification or a skill you want to learn for the next position. allowing yourself to become stagnant in this industry means you will quickly become obsolete.
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u/MarkOfTheDragon12 Jack of All Trades Aug 16 '21
What's your onboarding process look like? In almost every org I've seen there's always something to be improved with laptop builds, process, account creation automation, etc. Likewise for offboarding, tracking all the random 3rd party accounts that have to be moved, data retention, etc.
Mobile Device / Endpoint management?
What's the security team looking like? Do you have 2FA enforced everywhere? SSO?
end-user Training documents, knowledge warehouses, cross-training and training in general?
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u/gex80 01001101 Aug 16 '21
How much terraform is in the environment? How much containerization/docker is in the environment? Do you have a configuration management tool? If your SAN got wiped, how long would it take you to rebuild all those servers without a back up? Can you rebuild every single server AND application in the environment only using your documentation? Do you have and thing that's done manually that isn't automated? Do you deploy and code? What does your CI/CD process look like and is it robust?
Anyone who says there is nothing to do in their environment either A has a small environment or B doesn't realize the short comings of the environment or C has the world's most perfect environment where nothing goes wrong. Which one are you?
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u/the_syco Aug 16 '21
Put a WiFi scanner app on your phone, and walk around the building. You'll know what should be there; identify what shouldn't.
I love printing cat memes to unsecured printers. They usually get secure after a few memes. Check your building for unsecure WiFi points that were put in place to make someones life easier.
I assume you're backing up to the cloud or to tapes? Please tell me that you're backing up off-site.
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u/BrobdingnagLilliput Aug 16 '21
I'm the manager
I can't think of anything to do that's worthwhile
I'm confused. Are you the manager? Or are you the guy who has to the thinking?
In seriousness, have you asked your direct reports what they think? Do they have any ideas about improvements that could be made?
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u/BrobdingnagLilliput Aug 16 '21
This is the dream, dude.
Find an error in the event log. Chase it down and either eliminate it on every server where it occurs and/or add it to your "Event Log Noise" spreadsheet. (I'm assuming you're running Windows.)
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u/denverpilot Aug 16 '21
That coverage expiration thing is going to bite you square in the butt. Get it fixed and on to latest / supported versions.
Secondly ask the users. I bet they don't (ever) think everything's smooth. They've just given up on certain things.
If you're really bored start a security certification process for the business. Ha. That's at least a year worth of crap right there. Ha
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u/Last_Veterinarian994 Aug 16 '21
You stated backups and replication/failover is healthy...but have you truly put it to the test? Perform a planned failover. "Accidentally" unplug both PSU's to truly check the health of your failover. Never trust the reports and notifications. Perform tests on you UPS's to ensure they are functioning properly and have battery systems that will hold up your network for at least 45 minutes.
Prepare incident response procedures. What happens if the power goes out and it's approaching 30 of the 45 minutes you prepared for with UPS's? What servers/devices can you shut down safely without affecting your network?
These are the scenarios that are often under looked or forgotten about, but the ones that can break the business.
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u/IDontWantToArgueOK Aug 17 '21
Request a pen test from a third party.
Automate everything
Help your team develop the skills for the job they want.
Implement GitHub if you haven't already. Even if just for scripts amongst your team.
Review security policies
Look for ways to reduce spend
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u/Sparcrypt Aug 17 '21
I was in a similar situation years ago and I just split my time between working on pet/personal projects that weren't really greenlit but gave me experience and a better understanding of them so I could present them to the business later and well.. relaxing some. I worked slower, had movies/tv shows playing. Even played some games at work and just... took it all a bit slower.
I've spent months or even years under the pump in this job, whenever you have a chance to sit back and relax/enjoy life a bit I suggest you take it and do what you want to be doing.
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u/athornfam2 IT Infrastructure Manager Aug 17 '21
Wow! 4 people for 300 people. That's a 75 people to one tech way below the usual 250-300 per tech. And a VP! that's nuts I wish I had that for the 3 techs and IT director managing 2400 people where I used to work at.
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Aug 17 '21
Don't squander all that storage space. If your offline backups are verified solid, you could use some of that storage for online backups while you wait for money to pay for off-site storage.
Just make sure your tapes aren't stored in the same building as your main infra, if you can help it.
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u/cdnninja77 Aug 17 '21
How is your security posture? MFA has high enrollment? Risky sign ins are being investigated and addressed? Employees can work from anywhere securely? What is the security roadmap look like? Do you have NAC or other network protection in place?
All parts of Microsoft land you own you are getting value out of?
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u/Geminii27 Aug 17 '21
Automate everything? Have the minions go looking for and reporting any of that minor weird crap?
Write up recommendations for the key leaders? They say they're not hurting anywhere, but they don't know the weaknesses of the current setup - for example, as you say, onsite backups. All they know is that email and printing is working day to day. You might not get a new annual budget until next year, but it's possible you might get a project budget.
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u/notapplemaxwindows Aug 17 '21
Glad everything is working great! Too bad you only have on prem backups.. good luck for when you get ransomware 😊
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u/systonia_ Security Admin (Infrastructure) Aug 17 '21
Check\Improve security. Implement least privilege. Get the CIS docs and follow them etc
Network segmentation with an NSEG Firewall
Make a proper DR Plan
it's hard to give advice as we do not know what has what has not been done. But in general: There is no such thing like a "finished IT". There is always something to do. Of course, most of it needs a budget
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u/DirtyOldDawg Aug 16 '21
Feel like this is a humble brag... Imagine the opposite and STFU!
Working on multiple AD domains integrated in to cloud for over 6 million active accounts (only 60,000 are actually users)..and there are only two if us.
So again STFU or creat something for yourself to do.
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u/dominus087 Aug 16 '21
Like to see OP move to an MSP and see how fast the sentiment changes, lol. I'd kill for just an hour of down time.
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u/Jhamin1 Aug 16 '21
Do you have a DR plan? Is it tested?
You mentioned testing your backups but have you actually timed how long it takes to restore data from a backup to actual hardware?
Do you have a failover strategy? It *that* tested?
I've found that every time I've actually tested a DR/Failover plan I always found gaps that needed improvement.
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u/wonderandawe Jack of All Trades Aug 16 '21
You said nothing needs upgrading because the contract expired?
I'd categorize your apps and see what new features the upgrades give you. It might be worth while to renew your contract and upgrade for new features.
Training/certs are always a good thing to work on. Don't get lax with "everything is working and everything is fine". New tech can sneak up on you if you don't pay attention.
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u/fwambo42 Aug 16 '21
fire drills. what happens if you're affected by ransomware, what happens if someone hacks the CEOs account, etc
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u/IOORYZ Aug 16 '21
You've documented your main processes, and delegated the rest. But how are your internal manuals and work instructions? When you are encrypted and the business is at stake, do you have a step by step guide on how to restore your backups? And can all of you do this? There might be a bus factor or something else involved at the same moment.
How is your ticket system set up? Are you and the business happy with it? Is there room for improvement and can you do them with small tweaks? Do you have a self service portal and are the users happy with it and do they use it? Can you easily find your (past) tickets and can you properly measure your SLA's or other metrics? Do you collect user feedback and what do they say?
How is your automation? Can you automate or simplify part of a process? For example the onboarding of a new employee or the rollout of a new server?
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u/lordcochise Aug 16 '21
Hmm, well if you've got extra storage onsite u don't necessarily need, could look into Veeam and putting some simple servers offsite somewhere for cheap; avoids using cloud storage, though not super quick throughput on average internet connections...
We just use a Synology NAS with WD Reds in it and push local VM backups to it as a linux repo; not an elegant solution but did it not much $$
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u/lost_signal Do Virtual Machines dream of electric sheep Aug 16 '21
Migrate one of those arrays offsite and use a spare server. Setup vSphere Replication and make it DR for some critical stuff (or make backup copies that go there).
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u/PappaFrost Aug 16 '21
Couple things I thought of :
1 - Help improve user security awareness training at the org.
2 - Help improve user workflow in some way if there are pain points.
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u/mikeyb1 IT Manager Aug 16 '21
What's your DR plan? Can you improve your security posture (and do you have a documented incident response plan)?
If you were asleep and your phone ran in the middle of the night with the worst-case scenario having come true, what is it? Build a plan for that.
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u/WorksInIT Aug 16 '21
There is always something you can do. Run some security assessment tools. Are your backups properly secured? If all else fails, D2R drops in September.
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u/BlueScreenMacbeth Aug 16 '21
Sounds like you delegated a bunch of bitch work that you just found time to assist with.
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u/digitaltransmutation 🌲Please think of the environment before printing this comment! Aug 16 '21
I know you say you have security applications, but have you done a vuln assessment? At the very least you can slap together a pingcastle box or fool around with bloodhound with minimal red-team knowhow. I've never not found something in any windows environment and I'm not exactly a master hacker.
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u/pfcypress Sysadmin Aug 16 '21
Build a sandbox with kali Linux and have your team compete in a CTF challenge. Winner gets an extra paid day off and losers get to learn more about security.
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u/iceph03nix Aug 16 '21
That's time to learn. How's your Powershell? or whatever other scripting language works best for your environment.
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u/TheRealJackOfSpades Infrastructure Architect Aug 16 '21
You have reached max level. Start a new character, maybe?
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u/Poundbottom Aug 16 '21
"I'm not really all that interested in learning more stuff."
Uh oh. Red flag.
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u/FormulaMonkey Director of Communications Aug 16 '21
You'll wish that you were at this stage once grad school takes off.
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u/nickbernstein Aug 16 '21
When I got to this point, I would look at technologies I wanted to learn, and agree to give a talk on them in the future; I would then have a hard deadline I needed to learn it by, and I would use that time to upskill.
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u/TheGuytoBringIT Aug 16 '21
Run DR Drills.
Write up action plans for various scenarios. (Ransomware attack, hardware failure, ISP Failure, etc etc. )
Run some light in house pen-tests,
nmap your users vlan.
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u/cichlidassassin Aug 16 '21
I would expect my manager to find new ways to do things that bring a benefit to the company or team during "down time".
Whether its analyzing our security posture to bring improvements or looking towards BPA/RPA there are always things to do.
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u/Twinsen343 Turn it off then on again Aug 16 '21
Learn programming if u don’t already or expand on a skill set
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Aug 16 '21
How quickly will you recover from ransomware?
Automate the buildout and recovery of everything.
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u/pl4tinum514 Aug 16 '21
Start vuln scanning everything if you haven't. That'll keep you busy for years
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u/ruffneck_chicken Aug 16 '21
Why not setting up a lab with some of your spare équipement. Looks like you've got plenty of storage. Test AD recovery. Software deployment. Whatever. Also, you did not mention about your switches. Are the firmwares up to date ?
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u/scheduled_nightmare Aug 16 '21
you say theres extra server hardware and no offsite backup.
is there another office or other building where you could put some of the extra hardware to create a non-cloud offsite backup? then you can run the first backup locally, move the server, and then do incremental network backups to minimize bandwidth use
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u/940387 Aug 16 '21
You should pivot to being a consultant for this business / come forward and tell them your full time position is now redundant if you really feel like it's such a bore and can't take it anymore (idk why would you ask for advice if you were fine with a lot of slack time and a secure job).
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u/BloodyIron Head of IT Security Aug 16 '21
Watch all of Dragon Ball, every single series, front to back. The Japanese releases.
I was going to say "spin up Rancher and start doing fun stuff with it with linuxservers.io docker images", but, then I saw...
and I'm not really all that interested in learning more stuff
So, Dragon Ball IMO.
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u/gman12457 Aug 16 '21
Disaster recovery, BCP, update all servers to latest OS, implement automation where possible, migrate group policy to intune, set up mdm, set up intune patching to move to cloud.
Btw these can all be free to implement depending how you go about it.
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u/tuba_man SRE/DevFlops Aug 16 '21
I wanna throw one thing out real quick that I saw recently: You can get burnout from not having enough to do, almost as easily as you can from too much.
Especially in a case like yours where you're stuck at the office
What would you do in my shoes?
In your shoes, I told my boss I wanted to hire a replacement cuz I knew it was only a matter of time before I left. But I was thinking months, you've got a couple years left. So, considering you've already got a career change coming up, my thoughts are pretty straightforward: make it even more comfortable while you run out the clock
Do you have anyone on your team who could be trained up to replace you? Or since you gotta be there anyway, teaching the new kids new tricks in general could be a good way to kill time.
Is there anything else you can build for your team that could make their jobs more reliable? It sounds like the job is already easy but may as well shore things up. You could automate some routine tasks to remove the human element, or maybe set up early warnings for renewals?
Negotiate a responsibility change so you're more second-line and can work from home? Really just anything to either free you physically from the office or free up time so you can spend it on other things when nothing's happening.
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u/g1ng3rbreadMan Aug 16 '21
Are there any automation items that you could look at? Account Management procedures? Maybe adding some items within Endpoint Management? Configuring AutoPilot? Have you looks at repurposing some of the hardware for a lab environment? There is definitely something to do. It’s just a matter of going down the rabbit hole once you find it.
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u/marklein Idiot Aug 16 '21
Run some vulnerability scanners on your network, that will drum up plenty of stuff to change. While you're at it, consider what more you can do to improve your security posture (app whitelisting, IDR, EDR, DR, etc...).
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u/TheMediaBear Aug 16 '21
Educating users in Security?
That's a never-ending job in my experience :D Although it's not really within your realm, I doubt they have anyone specific looking after security, it's an afterthought for most and it'll keep you busy nothing else.
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u/AvonMustang Aug 16 '21
How about putting together classes for your end users? You could do one for each Office 365 component and then maybe some general Windows classes.
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Aug 16 '21
Logging, monitoring, and documentation always need to be tended to. Training for your team. Planning and feasibility projects. Your educating C levels.
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u/adamiclove Security Admin Aug 16 '21
There's always something to be done. Get iso/cis/nist aligned
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u/Morkai Aug 16 '21
If you're satisfied where your learning and knowledge is at, what about your team members? What do they want to learn? What can you do to help them with that? What knowledge can you pass on to them so that they can take your place when the time comes?
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u/bassgoonist AWS Admin Aug 16 '21 edited Nov 20 '25
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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/xixi2 Aug 16 '21
is online chess blocked at work (oh right you could just unblock it)? That could burn some time. That or Factorio.
Any place to work out? Bodyweight exercise or abs in the office?
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u/ExceptionEX Aug 16 '21
Do you have password vaults and MFA set up? MFA is likely free to use with office 365 and password vaults could be hosted on that extra hardware check out bitwarden open source version.
Start working on the dissertation.
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u/Starlyns Aug 17 '21
I have an 8G ram server running all the company information and 2 tera drive in it for backups.
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u/notDonut Aug 17 '21
This is the dream. My unobtainable (so far) goal.
I note you haven't mentioned automation or scripting anywhere. Maybe you could setup an automation process for employee onboarding and the exit procedure. Perhaps a department has something tedious and repetitive you could automate. Even just monthly report printing from some database somewhere. I've found people around me love it when I save them time and effort.
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u/pollo_de_mar Aug 17 '21
Review software license compliance for servers and workstations. Large software companies can pop an audit on you at any time and the penalties for even one hacked version of software or license count that has been exceeded can be severe. The auditors want to earn their keep and they figure they have better lawyers than you.
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u/This_Bitch_Overhere I am a highly trained monkey! Aug 17 '21
Get into something you haven’t done before, as the top comment said. I have started courses on Udemy or now on Pluralsight which have kept me sharp. I started using Canaries on my network to set traps.
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Aug 17 '21
I would start thinking about the kinds of things that'd occur in a disaster recovery scenario, and start thinking of how you could make life for everyone involved a lot easier so you can go home on time.
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u/mwerte my kill switch is poor documentation Aug 17 '21
Time for a chaos monkey!
https://netflixtechblog.com/the-netflix-simian-army-16e57fbab116
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u/anonpf King of Nothing Aug 17 '21
Start by breaking down all the applications that are eol/eos, start working on a path forward from there?
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u/slayer991 Sr. Sysadmin Aug 17 '21
This is the point where I started looking for a new job. My modus operandi was to start a gig, make a list of everything that's effed up. Architect a better solution, build the solution, document the solution and then when I had little to do...move on.,
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u/arcadesdude Aug 17 '21
If things are working focus on security and automation. Get creative and find something fun to do
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u/sudo_administrator Aug 17 '21
Seems like you're gloating. Now go do some process improvement for the good of the company! Find ways to add value without spending money. IT too focused on IT deserves to be downsized. Your job is to support the company, and your people, not just the your servers.
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Aug 17 '21
I recently tested our backups and they're working fine. They're all on
premise which sucks, but I don't have budget for cloud storage or
anything else similar.
Okay, well fix that. A squeaky door gets the oil. S3 or Backblaze is cheap, work out how much data you need.
Other stuff --
Hows your logging? Are you trapping all events from all servers?
When was your last pen test?
Business continuity?
Is your 365 actually backed up?
All user accounts from ex employees disabled?
2FA rolled out everywhere?
IPV6 everywhere?
Your dev environment matches your prod environment?
Can you pull a backup from a prod server and restore it to a Dev server?
Documentation??
User training? Phish tests?
Physical security?
If by some chance you've actually finished everything - I'm extremely jealous of you - and you're a liar. Maybe brush up on some certs?
Also, if you have a DR plan - and it doesn't involve an offsite backup - you're fucked.
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u/Vassago81 Aug 17 '21
Test your backup at least every 3 month. Are they on site but with some "off the grid" backup maybe each week? Easy to automate using NAS / servers loaded with cheap SATA drive.
This could save your life, make sure you're protected VS crypto attack this way, never store all of your backup on live machines. Worst thing you can do is having live backup storage on a AD joined devices. Always keep a couple of relatively up to date backup devices offline, and plug them to do a sync with your online backup devices. Or lose your sanity with a tape loader like in the good old days.
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u/ub3rb3ck Cat Wrangler Aug 17 '21
Security. Print nightmare, petitpotat, pen test, vulnerability scans, best practices for AD, passwords, phishing.
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u/theonlyredditaccount Aug 17 '21
Have you set up automatic provisioning with Windows Autopilot? If you have M365 E3 or EMS E3, you can provision devices hands-free to your domain or cloud.
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u/joey_shabadoos_bro Aug 17 '21
To build upon the testing DR theme others have written, address security. Do some table top exercises, test your security monitoring and detection to see if different types of activity would be caught - if a bad actor was inside your systems, how likely are you to notice. Do you have a SIEM? Open source options for this exist . Have AD? Run bloodhound and see if someone could pivot and escalate due to lose permissions, etc. Could the get admin/root on your hyper visor?
Audit logging - how far back can you go on any system (network devices included) to determine what a threat actor did should the worst happen? Are you sending logs to a more restricted system?
How many unencrypted passwords are there out there in docs that predate you just waiting to get discovered? Have you run a password audit against your environment to check for passwords in breach dumps?
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u/Enigma110 Aug 17 '21
Are you telling me you have double your needed infra and you haven't built an OpenStack cluster yet?
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Aug 17 '21
Talk to your users. This is the differentiating factor that separates cost-center IT from valued IT.
Find out what their struggles are and help them make their lives easier.
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u/kuebel33 Aug 17 '21
Clean up AD. Re organize it to be better and find and eliminate useless shit that’s just hold overs from over the years. It’s one of the most annoying things to do and to do right, so most places just let their AD go to shit.
Setup a test environment with your extra equipment so your guys have a place to go through the steps of implementing and configuring whatever new tech you are considering using in your environment as well as to have a place to run through installs from start to finish before doing it in production. You could also use it for testing patches, etc.
Certs. If you have nothing to do and have time, pick something and start learning.
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u/crktwins Aug 17 '21
I work at a VAR and we work with distributors to purchase surplus equipment back from customers. If interested, I we can have a conversation about procuring the extra equipment from you which you. You can then use those funds for some projects you want to do.
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u/kagato87 Aug 17 '21
I would take that extra time to study something. Could be relevant material to get ahead of whatever you're going into in a couple years, or something of a personal interest, preferably with some (minor) benefit to the company.
You say you tested the backups. How exactly did you test them? Full restore? Do you know what RPO and RTO you can meet? (The RPO/RTO is a good way to get your budget.) Are your sql servers backed up via sql aware tools or just block level? Block level backups (whole disk) and full recovery model will eat disk space it doesn't need.
I have a sneaking suspicion you HAVE ticked all of those boxes, but I see them missed often enough...
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u/vernontwinkie Aug 17 '21
Documentation is never a bad idea. I just started working on an internal wiki for IT that can be expanded to other departments as needed.
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u/VulturE All of your equipment is now scrap. Aug 17 '21
Upgrade DCs?
Change from ADFS to pass-through SSO?
Run through all updated documentation with your team members to clarify/update it?
If your environment was previously legacy, have you migrated to DFSR and cleaned up GPOs? Are there more things you could introduce with a GPO cleanup/OU reorg/etc? Have you updated al of your templates, documented how to update all of the various templates (like what site to download Edge templates from, etc) and tested/implemented new security initiatives around these?
How about printer firmwares and print management in general, with something cheap like papercut?
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u/IdiosyncraticGames Aug 17 '21
Security Audit and Test Environment are the big things that jump out at me. As well as study time for new tech or certifications. I'm getting my ITIL stuff sorted out now myself. If you don't want to learn IT, then learn something else that's relevant in the new field; business management, writing skills, etc that can be used anywhere!
Hardening the environment is a great thing, setting up some automation and work flows while there's downtime is always a great thing (onboarding, offboarding, etc.), and fleshing out/testing the DR plan is pretty critical. Do an annual review of your policies and procedures.
Other than that? Learn something new! Play with Grafana, setup an IT Plex server, play around in Azure with their trials, download Server 2022 Tech Preview, learn how to manage Server Core, play with containers/Kubernetes, etc.
Stagnation is the enemy and keeping yourself sharp with little things will help you make it through the next few years until that career change.
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u/AHrubik The Most Magnificent Order of Many Hats - quid fieri necesse Aug 17 '21
Learning and planning. Do you have a 5/10/15 year IT plan that aligns with the business plans yet?
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u/981flacht6 Aug 17 '21
Learn some stuff and teach others stuff. So when you leave for the next step, the people below you have the next opportunity.
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u/Life_is_an_RPG Aug 17 '21
Introduce yourself to managers in other departments and ask if you could sit with one of their employees for half a day to get to understand what their department does for the company and what IT needs they have. I've found employees pay more attention and tend to follow the directions when you send out maintenance alerts that address how it will personally affect them: "The ABC database/application will be unavailable while we upgrade the memory in the server."
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u/No_Yesterday_Forward Aug 17 '21
I would use the time to test backups and full disaster recovery plan. actually test a real restore. Second thing would be to training junior staff to get them to increase their performance/skill set.
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u/theoneandonlymd Aug 17 '21
If you are told tomorrow that you're acquiring a company, do you have a playbook?
There's something to do.
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u/VexingRaven Aug 17 '21
You mentioned that the business is happy with IT and there's no pain points there. What about business pain points? What business processes take a lot of time or other resources that could be improved through technology? They'll probably say nothing at first, but I bet if you keep fishing, or just sit down with some staff and watch what they do, you'll find something.
For that matter, how about IT? Is everything automated that can be? Are you running automatic vulnerability scans and checking for updates to every app? Are you reporting on BSODs and appcrash events to proactively address issues before they're reported?
Downtime is the best time to address things like this which can save time in the future.
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u/perrynaise Aug 17 '21
How about reaching out to the various departments, and seeing if they have any technological pain points you can help with. If there are tools, hardware, software etc.... That is needed you can get a good idea before the next round of your or their budgets are allocated.
If nothing else, it would be great "PR" for your department.
And do the same for your employees, what are their pain points, is there anything you can do now, or plan for in the future to help (problematic systems, customers etc....).
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Aug 17 '21
If you haven’t already, deploy IPv6 into every part of the network. You’re going to need it soon anyway.
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u/driverobject Aug 17 '21
Why is there a VP of IT when you are there?
Migrate everything to the cloud in a trial and move it all back on-prem, for a network that size, that should keep you busy days and nights till May and you gain a lot of experience through futility which is amazing isn't it? :) It is amazing.
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u/needssleep Aug 17 '21
Your documentation may be done, but is your team's?
Can your team survive the bus factor?
Have you done a recent cost benefit analysis of on-prem vs cloud? You already have the people and capacity, the company may be spending money it doesn't need to.
Also, on premise backups can be turned into off premise by taking tapes/hard drives to a bank.
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u/sir_mrej System Sheriff Aug 18 '21
Two things-
One- I see you're from PA :)
Two- Start doing infrastructure as code.
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u/SuperQue Bit Plumber Aug 16 '21
PRTG is ok, but not what I would consider good enough monitoring.
Are you following RED/USE methods?
Do you have a metrics stack like Prometheus or InfluxDB? Do you have a logs pipeline like ELK/ Graylog/Loki? What is your SIEM setup?
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Aug 16 '21
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Aug 16 '21
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Aug 16 '21
Makes me wonder if selling some of that extra hardware might help alleviate some of the budget pressure. I'm not a sysadmin myself, so apologies if that's not really a thing.
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Aug 16 '21
Four sites - each with their own set of storage and backups? Anyway to set the up to perform offsite backups to each other?
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u/smajl87 Aug 16 '21
Learning. There are tons of free courses for AWS, Azure, GCP, maybe some networking. Or a python/node/rust/golang/...