So I have been on a Metallica kick lately, not sure why maybe reliving the “Justice” days from back in high school. From drinking the Metallica backed whiskey, Blackened, to listening to an all Metallica playlist while tearing up the spin studio, or pumping the Black album over the Sonos while cleaning the house. Who knows?
What does this have to do with this blog post?
Well I’ll tell you, while working for a client as an Exchange administrator there were times malicious messages, a hazard to the computing environment would enter into the Exchange organization and cause a bit of pain to the users. These messages could lift user credentials, spam internal distribution lists, or even worse cause a device to become compromised. So as a trusted resource for this company I would have to at times “Seek and Destroy” these malicious messages that would have the potential to cripple the business.
Doing this deed would always require the utmost attention, due to the caliber of the tools being used to eradicate the message, one wrong search query or misplaced character could wipe out an entire mailbox, or even worse all mailboxes. What was my process for quickly executing this operation? You guessed it a plan, a predetermined list of instructions that would be able to carry out quickly and safely to obtain the best result.
The plan included predefined PowerShell searches based on the Search-Mailbox command with a dedicated report mailbox and failsafe to move messages vs delete them. Having a well-defined plan allowed me and eventually the operations team to carry out future “Seek and Destroy” missions with razor sharp accuracy with zero collateral damage.
Going back to my prior blog post, “It all starts with a Plan” allowed me to offer the best service to my client when faced with a “Seek and Destroy” mission.
And yes, while writing this I was listening to Seek and Destroy by you guessed it, Metallica.
Stay well and Stay Safe,
Joseph Noga
CTO of Komodo Cloud