First 40 PCs, then 100, and then 140 machines crashing, spreading fast. Then I stepped in… The First 40 Around 10 AM, the Help Desk escalated to my Teams channel: “40+ computers completely locked down—users can’t launch anything, not even Settings or Task Manager.” My colleagues had been troubleshooting for 3.5 hours. When I heard…
Category: Full Story
CrowdStrike Outage – Full Story
It seemed like the worlds largest cyber attack, yet the culprit was the very software designed to protect us. Even iconic landmarks such as the Times Square billboards were offline. Almost no one was immune. July 19, 2024 I had just laid down at 1:30 AM, and was just about ready to close my eyes.…
Entra/Intune Sync Issue Resolution – Full Story
For over a month, our team had been fighting with an Entra Connect synchronization problem that was preventing 40 workstations from properly enrolling in Microsoft Intune. Two or three other team members had several hours each over the past few weeks troubleshooting – checking network connectivity, reviewing firewall rules, reinstalling the Entra Connect service, even…
Database Server Migration Rescue – Full Story
None of this was supposed to happen, the AWS migration was supposed to be straightforward. I had just restarted the server to apply a last minute security patch per our protocol. We had successfully moved dozens of servers to the cloud using this same process over the past several months. But on May 9th, 2025…
AWS Sev1 Data Leak Resolution – Full Story
The NOC team escalated the ticket to me as a Severity 1 incident: our vulnerability scanning tool, Tenable Nessus, had discovered that an AWS FTP account may have been configured to have an inappropriate level of access, potentially exposing data that should have been restricted. A Sev1 meant potential data breach, immediate business impact, and…
Intune Revival – Full Story
The Microsoft Intune initiative had been dead in the water for nearly four years. The Help Desk Manager and Director wanted modern device management – the ability to automatically configure new computers, push out software updates, enforce security policies, and manage devices remotely without relying on on-premises infrastructure. Intune and Autopilot were supposed to deliver…
Timezone Border VPN Fix – Full Story
The Help Desk ticket had been in progress for over 5 hours over 2 days as a remote user could not connect to the VPN. Despite hours of troubleshooting by both a Level 2 and a Level 3 technician, nobody could figure out why. John my colleague in the help desk said he had checked…
OKTA Service Account Lockouts Resolution – Full Story
For months, I had been fighting a recurring problem with our OKTA Active Directory integration service account. Multiple times per week – sometimes multiple times per day – the account would lock out, breaking OKTA’s ability to synchronize user information from Active Directory. Each lockout meant manual intervention: unlock the account, reset the password in…
OKTA Automation Integration & Provisioning – Full Story
For years, our user provisioning process had been a manual nightmare. When a new employee was hired, HR would enter their information into UKG (our HR system), then send an email to IT with the person’s details. The Help Desk would manually create an Active Directory account and then would have to manually provision users…
Network Security Implementation – Full Story
When I was working for a manufacturing company and working in-office, I quickly noticed that the company had a completely flat network literally everywhere. Where every device from the store front point-of-sale systems to production machinery to office computers – existed on the same network segment. When I raised concerns about this with leadership, I…