IT Hour 13.May.22 | Features!

[Ben_Garrison]

The How to: Enter the JumpCloud Customer Awards is live! Go nominate yourself for the Jumpies awards!  

Community Update

• We have something that just went LIVE on the community this morning and you are the FIRST to hear about it: the JumpCloud Customer Awards—we are calling them the Jumpies—are now open. What are they? Well, you can enter your company into 4 different categories to win accolades, fame, and glory for what you’re doing with the product. Go check it out! Submissions will be accepted through June 8, and then voting will take place June 9 - 15. Go see the official rules for more details

Meetup Update (Alexa) 

Join the IT Admin Network and find a group near you

JumpCloud Product/News Updates

• New Mac Policy to enforce NTP server
• This should be released here shortly either today or early next week
• Admins can specify an NTP Server which is used in the timeServer key
• Admins can opt to select a timeZone
• That list should include UTC times for each timeZone.

Feature Request Spotlight 5-10 Min

This is a new segment, please note that feature requests and their development can change based on periodic sprints. These are some of the ones that have been moved into “In Progress” This means that the feature might fit into an already existing feature release, and will be released during that features strategy. Meaning a single feature request could be one part to a larger functionality being currently developed. So we won’t be able to discuss anticipated dates. This also won’t be a weekly segment, but only used when there are spotlighted feature requests that moved to In Progress.

• Cert based RADIUS authentication instead of credential based, for ease of use and security.
• Patch Management for Linux was a Feature Request that has seen it’s first implementation with Ubuntu Patch Management
• Better secrets management - Pushing wifi settings to devices
• MFA through LDAP Authentication for certain/specific groups
• Let us sync custom user attributes from jumpcloud to google workspace and m365(more attributes already added)
• Large number of requests that were submitted for better billing/invoicing in the admin panel, already released

IT Trending Updates “Rapid Fire Round” 

• Nvidia takes first step toward open source Linux GPU drivers (ArsTechnica)
• After years of hinting, Nvidia announced yesterday that it would be open-sourcing part of its Linux GPU driver, as both Intel and AMD have done for years now. Previously, Linux users who wanted to avoid Nvidia's proprietary driver had to rely on reverse-engineered software like the Nouveau project, which worked best on older hardware and offered incomplete support at best for all of Nvidia's GPU features.

• As a gamer this is great. Linux games are becoming more available, however there are still a lot of games that are not supported. I dream of a day where you can game on Linux like you can on Windows. I doubt that I will need to use Windows anymore at all if that’s the case. Well that and having an affordable capture card that works well.

• Pixel Watch, Pixel Buds Pro, and more: All the hardware announced at Google I/O (TNW)
  • Sporting a round design with curved glass edges and silicone straps. The curved glass is slightly reminiscent of the Apple Watch — except, you know, it’s round
  • will feature a revamped, smoother version of Wear OS, with a refreshed UI. Continuing the Apple Watch similarities, you can navigate the UI with a haptic crown, but there’s a side button for some extra functionality too.
  • Other features include tight Fitbit integration for tracking your health stats, including watch faces with glanceable information, and Emergency SOS alerts. The latter is a feature which can automatically contact emergency services after a car crash or other accidents.
  • At a price of $449, Google’s new Pixel 6A continues the company’s trend of affordable mid-range devices, but it’s a significant departure from previous A-series Pixel phones.
  • Google has typically prioritized camera performance on its A-series Pixels and opted for cheaper CPU components to save money. This time around, Google is taking a hint from the iPhone SE, packing its cheapest phone with its flagship processor — the Google Tensor chip — and saving money on the camera instead.
  • Google says it built a custom 6-core chip to power the ANC, while a feature called ‘Silent Seal’ optimizes ANC to each person’s ears to improve isolation. Of course, there’s also a transparency mode in should you want to hear your environment instead.
  • Yes, you read that right: Google announced the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, although it didn’t reveal much about them. But it did at least give us a good look at their designs
  • The company says the devices will launch in the fall and run on Android 13 — because of course they will.
  • I’ve gotta tell you, it feels weird to see a major company show off a device this far in advance, even if it’s only a handful of images. You’re gonna put leakers out of business.…
  • Maybe that’s the point.
  • The tablet doesn’t have a name yet. The only things we really know about it are that it’ll be powered by Google Tensor and that it runs Android, rather than Chrome OS like the defunct Pixel Slate.
  • Google says it plans to make the tablet available in 2023.
  • Pichai said Google has a “long way to go” before the glasses are released to the public, but it’s still an important reveal. Ever since Google abandoned Glass and Cardboard, it seemed the company had all but given up on extended reality experiences.
• Normally, it would be a big deal if Google announced on or two pieces of hardware at I/O; it’s a developer conference, after all. Instead, the company announced six new devices or seven, depending how you count)

• Apple will drop iPhone Lightning port in favor of USB-C in 2023, claims analyst (The Verge)
• Apple is preparing to swap the proprietary Lightning port on its iPhones next year for the nearly universally-embraced USB-C, claims company analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
• In a pair of tweets, Kuo said Apple was going to make the change in 2023, basing this claim on an unspecified “survey” (presumably of component manufacturers, from whom Kuo seems to get a lot of his information for predictions about future Apple products).
• Kuo said that adopting USB-C “could improve iPhone’s transfer and charging speed in hardware designs, but the final spec details still depend on iOS support.”

• Windows update breaks authentication for some server admins (The Register)
• Microsoft is warning a security update may cause authentication failures for Windows domain controllers.
• After installing updates released May 10, 2022 on your domain controllers, you might see authentication failures on the server or client for services such as Network Policy Server (NPS), Routing and Remote access Service (RRAS), Radius, Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP), and Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol (PEAP)," Microsoft  said in an advisory published Wednesday.
• RHEL 9 features edge management, container rollback (InfoWorld)
•  Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 is set to arrive with comprehensive edge management and automatic container rollback capabilities, as well as enhancements for Microsoft SQL Server deployments and new security features.
• Announced May 10, RHEL 9 is due to ship in coming weeks as the first production release built from the CentOS Stream, a continuously delivered Linux distribution that tracks ahead of RHEL. RHEL 9 will be available via the Red Hat Customer Portal and major cloud provider marketplaces.
• Again, JumpCloud is set to offer same day support for RHEL 9
• Windows 10 KB5013942 is crashing Event Viewer and causing other issues (Windows Latest)
• Some users are encountering serious problems following the release of Windows 10 May 2022 Update. While Windows 11 users have run into app crashes after they installed KB5013943, it looks like this month’s another important update KB5013942 is causing issues for Windows 10.
• After installing KB5013942, users are unable to launch Event Viewer. For those unaware, Windows Event Viewer is a tool for administrators to monitor log of apps and system messages, including errors, alerts, and warnings.
• Microsoft has confirmed that it’s aware of an issue in KB5013942 where certain apps that rely on GPU might close unexpectedly or experience intermittent issues. This only affects a small number of apps, but we don’t have a list of apps said to be experiencing problems after the update.
• Windows Package Manager winget is getting portable application support (ghacks)
• The first version of the Windows Package Manager was released in 2020, the first final version followed in 2021. It is a useful program to manage software on Windows 10 and 11 devices.
• Some of the supported features include installing multiple programs at once, installing Microsoft Store apps directly without visiting the Store, updating all installed programs at once, or to remove any number of Windows programs and apps.
• The big new feature in the preview version is support for portable apps. Up until now, winget did not support portable programs, only Microsoft Store apps and Win32 applications that needed to be installed; this changes with the preview release and the upcoming next stable version of the package manager for Windows.
• Open Source Community Hands White House 10-Point Security Plan (Info Security)
  • Offering security education for everyone working in the community.
  • Establishing a risk assessment dashboard for the top open-source components.
  • Accelerating adoption of digital signatures.
  • Replacing non-memory safe languages to eliminate the root cause of many bugs.
  • Establishing an open-source incident response team.
  • Better scanning of code by maintainers and experts to find bugs more quickly.
  • Conducting third-party code reviews of up to 200 of the most critical components.
  • Coordinating industry-wide research data sharing.
  • Improving softer bill of materials (SBOM) tooling and training to drive adoption.
  • Enhancing the 10 most critical build systems, package managers, and distribution systems with better security tools and best practices.
• The Linux Foundation and the Open Source Software Security Foundation (OpenSSF) brought together over 90 executives from 37 companies and government leaders representing the National Security Council (NSC) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), NIST and others.
• The plan they agreed on will see $150m in funding over the next two years directed to 10 streams designed to improve resilience and security of open-source software. Companies including Amazon, Google, Intel, Ericsson, Microsoft and VMware have already pledged over $30m.
• The three headline goals of the plan are to secure the production of open source code, improve vulnerability detection and remediation and shorten patching response times. The community plans to achieve this by: