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Thursday 28 February 2013

Commandlet for Identifying iOS 6.1 Devices

Identifying iOS 6.1 Devices

Get-ActiveSyncDevice | where {$_.deviceos -match "iOS 6.1"} | select devicetype,deviceos,deviceuseragent

Wednesday 13 February 2013

Startup key combinations for Intel-based Macs


Blocking USB Devices and Removable Media

Create a GPO
The first step is to open Group Policy Management and create a new GPO.

I typically like to create 2 GPO's One for blocking read access and one for blocking write access.

By Creating 2 separate policies I can apply each individually so I can allow read access for certain groups of users while blocking write access and I can apply both policies to other groups so I can block all access.

The policy we are about to create is user based This means that it will apply to the users and not the computer. This means we can block access as need for normal users on a computer while still allowing access for other users like say IT (ourselves) so we can still do our thing without any issues.

These policies apply to all forms of removable media not just USB based media. therefor you can use them to block other media access such as CD and DVD access as well.

Set the Desired Policy Items
In your GPO browse to the following location.

User Configuration >> Policies >> Administrative Templates >> System >> Removable Storage Access



If you look through the list of options you will see 2 choices for each media type. One choice when enabled blocks write access and the other choice blocks read access.

In my attached image i show an example of blocking all read access.

Therefor to block read access to each of these media types simply enable the deny read access item for each. 
If you want to block write access enable the block write access options. 
If you want to block both the enable both options.

Its really that simple.

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Note: 

For some reason Digital cameras require both read and write access. So if you have users that need access to a digital camera directly through the camera's USB connection they will need read and write access. Even if all they want to do is read files from the camera. However if you remove the memory card from the camera and read it with a memory card reader it only needs read access as expected.


Apply the GPO
Now that you have created your GPO Policy (or policies if you want more granular control like I did) all that you need to do is apply the GPO to the Users you wish to restrict removable media for by assigning it the correct OU's.

Once applied simply wait for the policy to update on the users computer or run "gpupdate /force" to speed things up and test it out.

Conclusion
This is a simple and reliable way to control user access to removable media for users with the bonus of still being able to allow yourself or other special users of your choice the ability to use that same removable media

http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/ ... able-media

Using Powershell to delete email in Exchange 2010


This can be used to find/delete one email or thousands of emails. A few weeks after the above happened, an automated alerting system went nuts and sent out about 80,000 emails to 10 or so mailboxes. Again, the below came in handy to zap away the offending emails.

Introducing… the Search-Mailbox cmdlet. This can search for specified criteria and will copy the results to a destination mailbox.  First off though, we have to tell Search-Mailbox which mailbox(es) to search – do this using the Get-Mailbox cmdlet.

For example:

Get-Mailbox -Identity “UserMailbox To Search” | Search-Mailbox -SearchQuery subject:”This email is SPAM!”,from:”dirtyspammer@spam.com” -TargetMailbox “Mailbox to put search results into” -TargetFolder “A folder in that mailbox”

This will search “UserMailbox to search” for any emails with a subject that contains “This email is SPAM!” and from “dirtyspammer@spam.com”. If it finds any emails that fit the criteria, then it will copy them all to “Mailbox to put search results into” in the folder “A folder in that mailbox”. Simple huh!

Note – if you leave the -Identity off the Get-Mailbox cmdlet, then it will search EVERY mail box in Exchange. Could be handy, but also be quite slow.

Now, if you want to delete emails, it’s pretty much the same command, just put a -DeleteContent onto the Search-Mailbox cmdlet and remove the TargetMailbox/TargetFolder options.

For example:

Get-Mailbox -Identity “UserMailbox To Search” | Search-Mailbox -SearchQuery subject:”This email is SPAM!”,from:”dirtyspammer@spam.com” -DeleteContent

There are a bunch of options you can use with the -SearchQuery option:



Source - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb232132.aspx#AQS