Using Automox

BleepingComputer Microsoft Confirms Windows 10 KB4524244 Issues and Pulls the Update Microsoft pulled the standalone KB4524244 security update today, February 15, 2020, from Windows Update after confirming user reports about freezes, boot problems, and installation issues since it was released on February 11. Reddit thread on the issue https://reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/f4agci/windows_server_2019_asking_for_bitlocker_recovery/

Bug Fixes: Device state will no longer show ‘When device detected’ after running a compliant policy https://support.automox.com/help/archive-release-notes-2020

The scheduled outage for 12/21 has been rescheduled to Saturday 12/28 9:00 AM and 3:00 PM MST. During this time we will be updating core infrastructure components and expect the following impact: Agents will not be able to communicate with the console Possible degraded performance and access in the console Please do not hesitate to reach out should you have any questions or concerns.

Hello there, Recently we discovered that we had numerous agents going offline randomly in Automox and we wanted to find a way to try to revive those endpoints remotely without having the team on the ground go to each endpoint individually. We have another service running on our endpoints that could also run Powershell/Bash scripts depending on OS and would run similarly as SYSTEM/Root user. We made use of this and came up with a script so that endpoints that were still online via this service and not in Automox could be fixed remotely. We’ve seen it work pretty successful thus far and wanted to share in case you might have need of it too. You could also run this script locally too to revive if you don’t have another service. All you need to change in the script is the cURL (with Access Key) which you can retrieve from Automox console. UPDATE: 15th Feb 2020. Added 2 additional functions to check if the service is running and whether there has been an established TCP connection by the ag

There’s now an easier way of doing that. The Devices page has a Last Disconnected Device Time column, that you can sort by: Screen Shot 2020-02-10 at 9.59.22 AM218×501 13.7 KB After you sort with the oldest at the top, you can see all the old computers that haven’t checked in at the top of the list, where you can select them all and delete them with the Remove Device button.

This KB shows you the system requirements for the Automox on Windows, macOS and Linux: https://support.automox.com/help/automox-agent-requirements

Bug Fixes: Schedule Preview on policy page will now show highlighted dates Fixed an error to ensure that feedback sent via Console is received by support https://support.automox.com/help/archive-release-notes-2020

We are a university running Microsoft’s Active Directory managed primarily through group policy. For those using group policy to install the Automox agent, would you mind sharing how you implemented the install through gp? My first thought is to create a computer based group policy (to compensate for the administrative rights requirement) that runs the Automox provided powershell script as a startup powershell script (with our unique identifier). Then apply this gpo to each computer ou where we want Automox installed. Is this the preferred way to install the client through MS group policy? or is there a better way? Thanks

The Verge – 22 Jan 20 Microsoft to force Chrome default search to Bing using Office 365 installer It’s a stealthy way to get more people to use Bing in businesses. and here’s the reddit sysadmin thread about it: reddit r/sysadmin - Office 365 ProPlus to change Chrome's default search engine to... 1,977 votes and 720 comments so far on Reddit If you start getting tickets about why users’ search engine is now Bing, you’ll know why!

Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup – 12 Nov 19 Backblaze Hard Drive Stats Q3 2019 This review looks at the Q3 2019 and lifetime hard drive failure rates of the data drive models currently in operation in our data centers. Backblaze, the online backup company, has been compiling these stats for a long time. HGST always wins with the lowest failure rates - I don’t think I’ve seen one quarterly report where they weren’t in the lead.

Disclaimer: I’ve never really utilized API keys for data requests until now. My API Use Case: Collect all server OS details including policies, users, and groups. This is a great tool if you want detailed data from your Automox environment! After reviewing the API Documentation for Automox I learned the types of API commands I could run and quickly realized I needed a way easily understand what’s in a .json file and how to read it. I haven’t work with a .json file before, but after some research I found Postman which allowed me to run API requests from and easily download a .json - which ended up converting to an excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is so well organized and now I can easily vlookup what I need on a smaller separate work task. It was an interesting first experience using an API key and Get requests but I felt it was successful in collecting everything I needed. I’m sure others could do this type of work in their sleep but it’s another wrench in the toolbox for me. Anyon

Enhancements: Improved Reboot Notifications. When the option is selected within a policy, a reboot notification message will display to the end user with a 15 minute warning before their device will reboot. If they wish, they can close the notification work or Reboot Now if they’re ready for it. The URL Search Parameters now match visual filters, sort columns, and sort direction on the software page. Bug Fixes: Fixed an issue that prevents patching to the latest version of Java 8 Updated Activity Log to correctly display non-zero status as Event Type error. Added in user’s timezone to Event Time to reduce confusion. https://support.automox.com/help/archive-release-notes-2020 KB for the new reboot notifications functionality: https://support.automox.com/help/using-reboot-notifications

It was a busy week at Automox! Here are all of the bug fixes and enhances we released this week: Enhancements: New 3rd Party Patching for Mac and Windows: Cyberduck, LibreOffice, KeePass New 3rd Party Patching for Mac: SizeUp, The Unarchiver New 3rd Party Patching for Windows: 7-Zip Improved handling of Change Password errors in Settings page Improved Reboot Notifications. When the option is selected within a policy, a reboot notification message will display to the end user with a 15 minute warning before their device will reboot. If they wish, they can close the notification work or Reboot Now if they’re ready for it. Learn more in this KB article The URL Search Parameters now match visual filters, sort columns, and sort direction on the software page Improved the display of links within Console Alerts Adding “Last Disconnected Device Time” column to Devices page Bug Fixes: Fixed bug with Next Patch Time sorting in Device Details in the Safari web browser Fixed an issue that preve

With the new year and new budgets comes the opportunity to come up with new and fun Automox swag. Do you have any requests for either the types of items or what we put on them? We have a couple ideas too, that we’d like your feedback on: Sticker that says “I survived CVE-2020-_____” where you can write in the CVE # Shirt idea: “It’s 2am, do you know where your servers are?” with maybe a pictures of some computers carousing and refusing to go home and apply their patches Thoughts?

Typically I’ll add credentials through a Powershell script with cmdkey however when trying to use cmdkey via Automox the response in the activity logs is “CMDKEY: Credential added successfully. CMDKEY: Credential added successfully.” yet the credentials are not added when checking on the device. I’m using exit 1 as for evaluation code and cmdkey /add:Server1 /user:Domain\User /pass:pass for the remediation code. Any thoughts?

Looks like this KB is breaking search on some Windows 10 machines: reddit r/sysadmin - Windows 10 no results in search window? 369 votes and 211 comments so far on Reddit One fix is to roll back the patch: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/c60d0c27-b294-4c55-ac4f-03c4f14bd89c/kb4512941-breaks-start-menu-searching?forum=win10itprogeneral Or you can add these registry keys and restart the searchui process: reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search /v BingSearchEnabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search /v CortanaConsent /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f tskill searchui Note: the above has to be run as the currently logged in user I’m creating a worklet to automate the above, but it requires that the registry key be changed for each users which makes the code a bit more complex (example from PDQ here). In the meantime I wanted to help spread the word in case y

Those of you who are community regulars may have noticed things were a bit quiet this week. That’s because all of Automox was at a week-long company retreat, doing planning and brainstorming for 2020. We didn’t want to let baddies know that the office was empty, which is why we didn’t announce it in advance. More photos and info to come, once I’ve unpacked and rested up. For now here’s a few photos: Image from iOS (12)3024×4032 1.42 MB Image from iOS (11)3024×4032 1.14 MB Image from iOS (10)3024×4032 957 KB Image from iOS (9)3024×4032 1.03 MB

Enhancements: Improved handling of Change Password errors in Settings page Bug Fixes: Fixed bug with Next Patch Time sorting in Device Details in the Safari web browser https://support.automox.com/help/archive-release-notes-2020

Enhancements: Added support for the following 3rd party applications: 7-Zip for Windows, The Unarchiver for Mac, and KeePass for both Windows and Mac. https://support.automox.com/help/archive-release-notes-2020 KB with updated full list (we’re up to 20!): https://docs.automox.com/home/software/third-party-software

TechCrunch Microsoft Teams has been down this morning – TechCrunch Microsoft Teams, the collaboration platform that competes with Slack, has been down since about 8:30 am ET. Microsoft reports the outage was due to an expired certificate. Microsoft first posted that an outage was in progress on its Office 365 Status... How does it take them hours to roll out a new cert??

anvaka.github.io Graph of related subreddits Visualization of related subreddits It makes a graph of subreddits based on people who post in both places. Handy for finding subreddits around a topic of interest, in this case programming.