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Top 20 Open Source Cyber Security Monitoring Tools in 2023

As cyber threats continue to evolve, security professionals require reliable tools to defend against security vulnerabilities, protect sensitive data, and maintain network security. Open source cyber security tools provide a cost-effective solution for individuals and organizations to combat these threats on-premises and with cloud security and mobile devices. Let’s consider the top 25 open-source cyber security monitoring tools in 2023 that help ensure continuous network and system performance monitoring.

What are the Top Cybersecurity Threats Today?

As cyber threats continue to evolve and become more sophisticated, organizations must stay informed and prepared to defend against a wide range of security risks.

Here are the top cybersecurity threats that businesses and individuals should be aware of today:

1. Phishing Attacks: Phishing attacks are a prevalent form of social engineering where cybercriminals use deceptive emails or websites to trick users into revealing sensitive information or installing malware. These attacks often target login credentials, financial information, and other personal data.

2. Ransomware: Ransomware is a type of malicious software that encrypts a victim’s files or locks their systems, demanding a ransom payment to restore access. Ransomware attacks can cause significant financial losses and operational disruptions for organizations.

3. Insider Threats: Insider threats refer to security risks posed by employees, contractors, or other individuals with authorized access to an organization’s systems and data. These threats can result from malicious intent or negligence, leading to data breaches or system compromises.

4. Supply Chain Attacks: Also known as third-party attacks or vendor risk, supply chain attacks target an organization’s suppliers, vendors, or partners to gain access to their systems and data. These attacks often exploit security vulnerabilities in the supply chain to compromise multiple organizations.

5. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks: DDoS attacks involve overwhelming a target’s network or system with a flood of traffic, rendering it inaccessible to legitimate users. DDoS attacks can cause severe downtime and service disruptions.

6. Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs): APTs are sophisticated, coordinated cyberattacks by well-funded threat actors or nation-state groups that target specific organizations for espionage, data theft, or sabotage. APTs often use advanced techniques and tactics to evade detection and maintain a long-term presence within a target’s network.

7. Zero-Day Exploits: Zero-day exploits are attacks that take advantage of previously unknown security vulnerabilities in software or systems. These vulnerabilities, also known as zero-day flaws, have no existing patches or fixes, making them particularly dangerous and challenging to defend against.

8. Internet of Things (IoT) Security: The increasing adoption of IoT devices and connected technologies has expanded the attack surface for cybercriminals. IoT devices are often vulnerable to cyber threats due to weak security measures, creating new risks for organizations and consumers.

9. Data Breaches: Data breaches occur when unauthorized individuals gain access to an organization’s sensitive data, such as customer information, financial records, or intellectual property. Data breaches can result in significant financial and reputational damage for organizations.

10. Cloud Security Threats: As more organizations migrate to cloud-based services, cloud security has become a critical concern. Threats in the cloud can arise from misconfigurations, weak authentication mechanisms, and vulnerabilities in cloud applications or infrastructure.

Benefits of Open-Source CyberSecurity tools

Open source cyber security monitoring tools offer numerous advantages over proprietary solutions, making them an attractive option for businesses, organizations, and individuals looking to enhance their security posture and perform effective security testing.

Here are some key benefits of using open-source tools for cyber security monitoring for monitoring services that pose security threats, even if you have another network monitoring system. Proper cybersecurity monitoring and access management are key to maintaining a secure environment.

Cost-Effectiveness

One of the most significant benefits of open-source cyber security tools is their cost-effectiveness. With no licensing fees or subscription costs, these free tools enable security teams to access powerful network monitoring solutions without breaking the bank.

This particularly benefits small businesses and startups with limited budgets, allowing them to allocate resources to other critical areas.

Customizability and Flexibility

Open-source network monitoring tools offer high customizability and flexibility, allowing security professionals to tailor the tools to their specific needs. This adaptability enables organizations to address unique security threats and vulnerabilities, ensuring a more robust security posture.

Additionally, the ability to integrate these tools with existing security infrastructure adds an extra layer of protection to network security.

Rapid Development and Updates

The open-source community is known for its rapid development and frequent updates. As new security threats and vulnerabilities emerge, open-source cyber security tools are often among the first to receive patches and updates.

This continuous monitoring and proactive response help organizations stay ahead of potential security risks and maintain a strong security posture.

Extensive Support and Collaboration

Open-source cyber security tools benefit from an extensive support network, comprising developers, users, and experts from around the world.

This collaborative environment fosters knowledge sharing, allowing security professionals to learn from one another and develop more effective security strategies.

Additionally, the availability of comprehensive documentation and online forums makes it easier for users to troubleshoot issues and enhance their understanding of network monitoring and security.

Improved Security and Transparency

With their source code openly available for inspection, open-source cyber security tools offer greater transparency than proprietary alternatives. This transparency allows security professionals and researchers to scrutinize the code for potential security vulnerabilities and ensure its integrity.

Moreover, the collaborative nature of the open-source community means that any identified issues are addressed quickly, further enhancing the overall security of these tools.

Platform Independence and Interoperability

Open-source network monitoring software often supports a wide range of operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, allowing organizations to deploy these tools across diverse environments.

This platform independence and interoperability help organizations ensure comprehensive network monitoring, regardless of the underlying infrastructure.

Top 25 Open Source Cyber Security Monitoring Tools in 2023

Note the following free cyber security monitoring tools in 2023 and the open-source list of solutions you can take advantage of and no free trial needed.

1. Wireshark: Network Protocol Analyzer

Wireshark is a widely-used network protocol analyzer that enables security teams to troubleshoot, analyze, and monitor network traffic in real-time to detect security issues. It is a defacto standard network monitoring tool.

command line interface data packets open source platform data breaches packet capture web apps network packets computer security experts solarwinds security event manager security scanning

By dissecting network protocols, Wireshark provides valuable insights into potential security risks and network vulnerabilities, allowing professionals to identify and resolve issues efficiently with the Wireshark network monitoring solution.

You can monitor a wide range of protocols, including TCP/IP, simple network management protocol, FTP, and many others. If you are looking for a network monitor this is it.

2. Snort: Network Intrusion Detection and Prevention System

Snort is a powerful open-source intrusion detection and prevention system (IDPS) that monitors network traffic and detects potential security threats.

It provides real-time traffic analysis, packet logging, and alerting capabilities, making it an essential tool for security auditing and network monitoring.

3. OSSEC: Host-Based Intrusion Detection System

OSSEC is a comprehensive host-based intrusion detection system (HIDS) that offers log analysis, file integrity checking, rootkit detection, and more.

It supports various operating systems, including Linux, Windows, and macOS, and helps security professionals monitor and analyze network protocols for potential security vulnerabilities.

4. Security Onion: Intrusion Detection and Network Security Monitoring Distribution

Security Onion is a Linux distribution specifically designed for intrusion detection, network security monitoring, and log management.

With a suite of powerful open-source tools, including Snort, Suricata, and Zeek, Security Onion provides a robust solution for security teams to monitor networks and detect security breaches.

5. Nmap: Network Scanning and Discovery Tool

Nmap is a versatile network scanning and discovery tool that helps security professionals identify network devices, open ports, and running services.

It is an essential network monitoring software for vulnerability management, penetration testing, and network inventory management.

6. Kismet: Wireless Network Detector, Sniffer, and Intrusion Detection System

Kismet is a wi fi security tool that detects, sniffs, and analyzes wireless networks. By monitoring wireless network traffic, Kismet identifies potential security risks, network vulnerabilities, and unauthorized users, making it an invaluable tool for wireless network security.

7. Suricata: High-Performance Network Intrusion Detection and Prevention Engine

Suricata is an open-source, high-performance network intrusion detection and prevention engine that provides real-time network traffic analysis, threat detection, and alerting.

Suricata enables security professionals to maintain network integrity and security by employing advanced threat defense and anomaly detection techniques.

8. Zeek (formerly Bro): Network Analysis Framework for Security Monitoring

Zeek, previously known as Bro, is a powerful network analysis framework that offers real-time insight into network traffic.

With its flexible scripting language and extensible plugin architecture, Zeek provides comprehensive visibility into network activity, enabling security teams to detect and prevent security threats.

9. OpenVAS: Vulnerability Scanning and Management Solution

OpenVAS is a comprehensive vulnerability scanning and management solution that helps security professionals identify, assess, and remediate security vulnerabilities.

With its extensive plugin library, OpenVAS ensures continuous monitoring and up-to-date vulnerability information, making it a critical tool for vulnerability management.

10. ClamAV: Open-Source Antivirus Engine

ClamAV is an open-source antivirus engine that detects trojans, viruses, and other malicious software.

It offers a command-line scanner, a graphical user interface (GUI) for Windows operating system, and integration with mail servers, ensuring that your systems are protected from security threats.

11. Fail2Ban: Log-Parsing Application to Protect Against Brute-Force Attacks

Fail2Ban is a log-parsing application that monitors log files for malicious activity, such as repeated failed login attempts. Fail2Ban bans the offending IP address when a potential attack is detected, effectively protecting your network from brute-force attacks and unauthorized access.

12. AlienVault OSSIM: Open-Source Security Information and Event Management Platform

AlienVault OSSIM is an open-source security information and event management (SIEM) platform that provides real-time event correlation, log analysis, and threat intelligence.

By integrating multiple security tools, OSSIM helps security teams maintain a unified user interface and enhance their overall security posture.

13. Cuckoo Sandbox: Automated Malware Analysis System

Cuckoo Sandbox is an open-source automated malware analysis system that enables security professionals to analyze suspicious files and URLs in a safe, isolated environment.

It provides detailed reports on malware behavior, including network traffic analysis, file system changes, and API traces, helping security teams identify and mitigate security risks.

14. Logstash: Log Processing and Management Tool

Logstash is part of the Elastic Stack (ELK Stack) and offers log processing and management capabilities.

It collects, parses, and stores log data from various sources, making it an essential tool for security professionals to monitor and analyze network activity, detect security breaches, and maintain system performance.

15. pfSense: Open-Source Firewall and Router Distribution

pfSense is an open-source firewall and router distribution based on FreeBSD. It offers a powerful and flexible network security, traffic shaping, and VPN connectivity solution.

With its extensive features and customization options, pfSense is ideal for securing web servers and internal networks.

16. ModSecurity: Open-Source Web Application Firewall

ModSecurity is an open-source web application firewall (WAF) providing real-time security monitoring and access control. It detects and prevents web attacks, protects sensitive data, and helps security professionals maintain compliance with industry standards and regulations.

17. AIDE (Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment): File and Directory Integrity Checker

AIDE is a file and directory integrity checker that monitors system files for unauthorized changes. It detects modifications, deletions, and additions, allowing security teams to maintain system integrity and prevent security breaches.

18. Graylog: Open-Source Log Management Platform

Graylog is an open-source log management platform that centralizes and analyzes log data from various sources.

Graylog helps security professionals detect security threats, identify network vulnerabilities, and maintain network security by providing comprehensive visibility into network activity.

19. Wazuh: Security Monitoring and Compliance Solution

Wazuh is a free, open-source security monitoring and compliance solution that integrates host-based and network-based intrusion detection systems, file integrity monitoring and security policy enforcement.

Wazuh’s centralized management and powerful analytics capabilities make it an essential tool for security teams to detect and respond to security threats.

20. T-Pot: Honeypot Platform

T-Pot is a platform combining multiple honeypots into a single, easy-to-deploy solution for cyber security monitoring. By simulating vulnerable systems and services, T-Pot attracts attackers and collects threat data, providing valuable insights into current attack trends and techniques.

Honorable mentions

Samhain: Host-Based Intrusion Detection System

Samhain is a host-based intrusion detection system (HIDS) that provides file integrity checking and log file monitoring. It detects unauthorized modifications, deletions, and additions, helping security professionals maintain system integrity and prevent security breaches.

SELKS: Network Security Management ISO with Suricata

SELKS is a live and installable network security management ISO based on Debian, focusing on a complete and ready-to-use Suricata IDS/IPS ecosystem. It offers a user-friendly interface and powerful analytics tools, making it an ideal choice for security teams to monitor networks and detect potential security threats.

Squid: Open-Source Web Proxy Cache and Forward Proxy

Squid is an open-source web proxy cache and forward proxy that improves web performance and security. By caching frequently-requested web content and filtering web traffic, Squid helps reduce bandwidth usage, enhance user privacy, and protect against web-based security threats.

YARA: Pattern-Matching Tool for Malware Researchers

YARA is a pattern-matching tool designed for malware researchers to identify and classify malware samples. By creating custom rules and signatures, YARA enables security professionals to detect and analyze malicious software, enhancing their understanding of current malware trends and techniques.

Arkime (formerly Moloch): Large-Scale, Open-Source, Indexed Packet Capture and Search System

Arkime is a large-scale, open-source, indexed packet capture and search system that provides comprehensive visibility into network traffic. It enables security professionals to analyze network protocols, detect security vulnerabilities, and identify potential security threats, making it an essential tool for network monitoring and security auditing.

Tips to Improve Your Cybersecurity Posture

Improving your cybersecurity posture is essential for safeguarding your organization from various cyber threats. Here are some practical tips to help enhance your cybersecurity defenses:

Implement Regular Security Audits: Conducting routine security audits can help identify potential weaknesses in your organization’s cybersecurity infrastructure.
This includes checking for outdated software, misconfigured settings, and other vulnerabilities that may expose your systems to attacks.
Keep Software and Systems Updated: Regularly update your software, operating systems, and firmware to protect against known vulnerabilities and exploits.
This includes applying security patches and updates as soon as they become available.
Use Strong Authentication Mechanisms: Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all critical systems and applications.
MFA adds an extra layer of security by requiring users to provide additional verification, such as a one-time code or biometric authentication, in addition to their password.
Encrypt Sensitive Data: Encrypt sensitive data both in transit and at rest to prevent unauthorized access. This includes using secure communication protocols, such as HTTPS and TLS, and implementing encryption solutions for data storage.
Establish a Strong Password Policy: Enforce a robust password policy that requires users to create complex, unique passwords and update them regularly. Additionally, consider using a password manager to help users manage and store their passwords securely.
Educate Employees on Cybersecurity Best Practices: Provide ongoing security awareness training to educate employees about common cyber threats, safe online practices, and how to recognize and report potential security incidents.
Implement Network Segmentation: Divide your network into smaller segments, isolating critical systems and data from less secure areas. This can help prevent the spread of malware and limit the damage in case of a security breach.
Regularly Backup Important Data: Regularly back up essential data and store copies offsite or in the cloud. This ensures that you can quickly recover from data loss or ransomware attacks.
Utilize Endpoint Security Solutions: Deploy comprehensive endpoint security solutions to protect devices connected to your network.
This includes antivirus software, firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems, and device management tools.
Monitor and Analyze Network Traffic: Use network monitoring tools to analyze network traffic, detect anomalies, and identify potential security threats. Regular monitoring can help detect and respond to security incidents more effectively.
Develop a Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan: Create a detailed incident response plan outlining the steps to take in a security breach. Regularly review and update the plan, and ensure that all employees are familiar with the procedures.
Collaborate with Security Professionals: Engage with cybersecurity experts or managed service providers to help develop and maintain a strong security posture.
This can provide access to specialized knowledge and resources to stay up-to-date with the latest threats and best practices.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What are the best open-source cyber security monitoring tools available in 2023?

This blog post covers the top 25 open-source cyber security monitoring tools in 2023, including Wireshark, Snort, OSSEC, Security Onion, Nmap, Kismet, Suricata, Zeek, OpenVAS, ClamAV, and more.

These tools provide comprehensive network monitoring, threat detection, and vulnerability management capabilities to help organizations maintain a robust security posture.

2. Why choose open-source cyber security monitoring tools over proprietary alternatives?

Open-source cyber security monitoring tools offer several advantages: cost-effectiveness, customizability, rapid development and updates, extensive support, improved security, and platform independence.

These benefits make open-source tools attractive for organizations looking to enhance their network security and protect sensitive data.

3. How can I improve my organization’s cybersecurity hygiene?

In addition to utilizing open-source cyber security monitoring tools, organizations can improve their cybersecurity hygiene by implementing security awareness training, regularly updating software and systems, employing strong password policies, using multi-factor authentication, monitoring network traffic, and conducting regular security audits and penetration testing.

4. What is the importance of continuous monitoring in cybersecurity?

Continuous monitoring plays a crucial role in identifying and addressing security threats and vulnerabilities in real-time.

By regularly analyzing network traffic, security professionals can detect potential issues, respond to incidents promptly, and ensure the safety and integrity of their digital assets.

5. How can I protect my web applications from security threats?

Web application security can be improved by using tools such as ModSecurity, an open-source web application firewall (WAF) that provides real-time application security monitoring and access control.

Regularly updating web applications, conducting vulnerability assessments, and implementing secure coding practices can also help mitigate security risks.

6. What role do threat intelligence and threat data play in cybersecurity?

Threat intelligence and threat data help security professionals understand the latest trends, tactics, and techniques cybercriminals use.

Organizations can proactively address potential issues and maintain a strong security posture by staying informed about emerging threats and vulnerabilities.

7. Are open-source cyber security monitoring tools suitable for small businesses and startups?

Yes, open-source cyber security monitoring tools are ideal for small businesses and startups, as they offer cost-effective and powerful network monitoring solutions.

These tools enable organizations with limited budgets to access advanced security features without incurring high licensing fees or subscription costs.

Wrapping up

The ever-evolving landscape of cyber threats demands reliable and effective tools for security professionals to protect networks, systems, and sensitive data.

These Top 20 open-source cyber security monitoring tools in 2023 provide a comprehensive network monitoring, threat detection, and vulnerability management solution.

By incorporating these tools into your security strategy, you can enhance your overall security posture and ensure the safety and integrity of your digital assets.

Huge List Of PowerShell Commands for Active Directory, Office 365 and more

This is the ultimate collection of PowerShell commands for Active Directory, Office 365, Windows Server and more.

These commands will help with numerous tasks and make your life easier.

Table of Contents:

Active Directory PowerShell Commands

This section contains general commands for getting domain details.

View all Active Directory commands

get-command -Module ActiveDirectory

Display Basic Domain Information

Get-ADDomain

Get all Domain Controllers by Hostname and Operating

Get-ADDomainController -filter * | select hostname, operatingsystem

Get all Fine Grained Password Policies

Get-ADFineGrainedPasswordPolicy -filter *

Get Domain Default Password Policy

Gets the password policy from the logged in domain

Get-ADDefaultDomainPasswordPolicy

Backup Active Directory System State Remotely

This will back up the domain controllers system state data. Change DC-Name to your server name and change the Backup-Path. The backup path can be a local disk or a UNC path

invoke-command -ComputerName DC-Name -scriptblock {wbadmin start systemstateback up -backupTarget:"Backup-Path" -quiet}

Related: Windows CMD Commands

Active Directory User PowerShell Commands

This section is all Active Directory user commands.

Get User and List All Properties (attributes)

Change username to the samAccountName of the account

Get-ADUser username -Properties *

Get User and List Specific Properties

Just add whatever you want to display after select

Get-ADUser username -Properties * | Select name, department, title

Get All Active Directory Users in Domain

Get-ADUser -Filter *

Get All Users From a Specific OU

OU = the distinguished path of the OU

Get-ADUser -SearchBase “OU=ADPRO Users,dc=ad,dc=activedirectorypro.com” -Filter *

Get AD Users by Name

This command will find all users that have the word robert in the name. Just change robert to the word you want to search for.

get-Aduser -Filter {name -like "*robert*"}

Get All Disable User Accounts

Search-ADAccount -AccountDisabled | select name

Disable User Account

Disable-ADAccount -Identity rallen

Enable User Account

Enable-ADAccount -Identity rallen

Get All Accounts with Password Set to Never Expire

get-aduser -filter * -properties Name, PasswordNeverExpires | where {$_.passwordNeverExpires -eq "true" } | Select-Object DistinguishedName,Name,Enabled

Find All Locked User Accounts

Search-ADAccount -LockedOut

Unlock User Account

Unlock-ADAccount –Identity john.smith

List all Disabled User Accounts

Search-ADAccount -AccountDisabled

Force Password Change at Next Login

Set-ADUser -Identity username -ChangePasswordAtLogon $true

Move a Single User to a New OU

You will need the distinguishedName of the user and the target OU

Move-ADObject -Identity "CN=Test User (0001),OU=ADPRO Users,DC=ad,DC=activedirectorypro,DC=com" -TargetPath "OU=HR,OU=ADPRO Users,DC=ad,DC=activedirectorypro,DC=com"

Move Users to an OU from a CSV

Setup a csv with a name field and a list of the users sAmAccountNames. Then just change the target OU path.

# Specify target OU. $TargetOU = "OU=HR,OU=ADPRO Users,DC=ad,DC=activedirectorypro,DC=com" # Read user sAMAccountNames from csv file (field labeled "Name"). Import-Csv -Path Users.csv | ForEach-Object { # Retrieve DN of User. $UserDN = (Get-ADUser -Identity $_.Name).distinguishedName # Move user to target OU. Move-ADObject -Identity $UserDN -TargetPath $TargetOU }

Active Directory Group Commands

This section list commands used for getting Active Directory group information.

Get All members Of A Security Group

Get-ADGroupMember -identity “HR Full”

Get All Security Groups

This will list all security groups in a domain

Get-ADGroup -filter *

Add User to Group

Change group-name to the AD group you want to add users to

Add-ADGroupMember -Identity group-name -Members Sser1, user2

Export Users From a Group

This will export group members to a CSV, change group-name to the group you want to export.

Get-ADGroupMember -identity “Group-name” | select name | Export-csv -path C:\OutputGroupmembers.csv -NoTypeInformation

Get Group by keyword

Find a group by keyword. Helpful if you are not sure of the name, change group-name.

get-adgroup -filter * | Where-Object {$_.name -like "*group-name*"}

Import a List of Users to a Group

$members = Import-CSV c:itadd-to-group.csv | Select-Object -ExpandProperty samaccountname Add-ADGroupMember -Identity hr-n-drive-rw -Members $members

Active Directory Computer Commands

List of commands for getting Active Directory computers.

Get All Computers

This will list all computers in the domain

Get-AdComputer -filter *

Get All Computers by Name

This will list all the computers in the domain and only display the hostname

Get-ADComputer -filter * | select name

Get All Computers from an OU

Get-ADComputer -SearchBase "OU=DN" -Filter *

Get a Count of All Computers in Domain

Get-ADComputer -filter * | measure

Get all Windows 10 Computers

Change Windows 10 to any OS you want to search for

Get-ADComputer -filter {OperatingSystem -Like '*Windows 10*'} -property * | select name, operatingsystem

Get a Count of All computers by Operating System

This will provide a count of all computers and group them by the operating system. A great command to give you a quick inventory of computers in AD.

Get-ADComputer -Filter "name -like '*'" -Properties operatingSystem | group -Property operatingSystem | Select Name,Count

Delete a single Computer

Remove-ADComputer -Identity "USER04-SRV4"

Delete a List of Computer Accounts

Add the hostnames to a text file and run the command below.

Get-Content -Path C:ComputerList.txt | Remove-ADComputer

Delete Computers From an OU

Get-ADComputer -SearchBase "OU=DN" -Filter * | Remote-ADComputer

Group Policy Commands

List of commands for getting group policy details.

Get all GPO related commands

get-command -Module grouppolicy

Get all GPOs by status

get-GPO -all | select DisplayName, gpostatus

Backup all GPOs in the Domain

Backup-Gpo -All -Path E:GPObackup

Office 365 PowerShell Commands

Commands for Office 365.

Connect To Exchange Online

This will pop up and ask for credentials

$UserCredential = Get-Credential $Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell/ -Credential $LiveCred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection Import-PSSession $Session

Force Azure Sync

This is for the azure ad sync client.

Force delta sync (only sync changes

Start-ADSyncSyncCycle -PolicyType Delta Force a full sync Start-ADSyncSyncCycle -PolicyType Initial

Get A List of All Office 365 Users

Get-MsolUser | Select DisplayName, City, Department, ObjectID

Get Full mailbox details

Get-Mailbox email-address | fl

Get Calendar Permissions

Get-MailboxFolderPermission username:calendar

Enable Remote Mailbox (Hybrid Environment)

Use this command if you have an existing on-premise user that needs an office 365 mailbox. There are other ways to do this but this creates all the attributes in the AD account.

Replace the username and the tenant fields

Enable-RemoteMailbox username -RemoteRoutingAddress "username@tenant.mail.onmicrosoft.com"

Windows Server & Client Commands

Get all Services

get-service

Get all Processes

get-process

Display Network Adapters

Gets detailed about the network adapter installed such as name, status, speed and mac address.

get-netadapater

Restart Remote Computers

Restart-Computer -ComputerName "Server01", "Server02", "localhost"

Get Last Boot Time

This takes a few lines

$os = Get-WmiObject win32_operatingsystem $uptime = (Get-Date) - $os.ConvertToDateTime($os.LastBootUpTime) Write-Output ("Last boot: " + $os.ConvertToDateTime($os.LastBootUpTime))

You can also run this single line to get last boot time

systeminfo | more

Start a Remote Session

Use this to start an interactive session with a remote computer

Enter-PSSession -ComputerName

Read the Content of a File (Open a file)

This example shows how to read the content of the windows firewall log file

Get-Content -Path "c:windowssystem32logfilesfirewallpfirewall.log"

Copy Files & Folders

Use this command to copy an entire folder to another folder. This will copy the folder and all the sub folder/files. The -verbose command will display the results to the console.

copy-item E:\WindowsImageBackup\exchange -destination \\server1\Backups\Exchange -recurse -verbose

Basic PowerShell Commands

Get Execution Policy

get-executionpolicy

Set Execution Policy to Unrestricted

set-executionpolicy unrestricted

Show PowerShell Version

$PSVersionTable

Get help for a command

Use this to get the help information for a command

get-help command-name

Search Get Help

Use this to search the help files. This is useful if you don’t know the command or want to see if one exists.

get-help *keyword*

Get Installed Modules

Use this command to display all the installed modules on a computer

get-installedmodule

List All Available Modules

This will list all available modules on the computer.

Get-Module -ListAvailable

Exporting results to CSV

Add export-csv to the end of commands

Get-ADUser username -Properties * | Select name, department, title | export-csv c:\user.csv

Display available commands

This will display all commands that are available based on the modules that are loaded.

get-command

Find New Modules

Replace *ntfs* with the keyword you want to search for. This searches modules at https://www.powershellgallery.com/

Find-Module *ntfs*

Install a New Module

Installs modules from https://www.powershellgallery.com/

I found a module called NTFSSecurity, to install it I run this command

install-module NTFSSecurity

Recommended Tool: SolarWinds Hybrid Systems Monitor

Monitor your physical and virtual servers with ease and troubleshoot more easily when downtime or other application performance issues occur.

What I like best about this tool is it’s easy-to-use dashboard and built-in alerting. See key metrics to help identify issues before users complain.

Monitor Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, and other critical IT systems, both locally and cloud hosted. Get automated email alerts and know which applications are having issues in your environment.

Source :
https://activedirectorypro.com/powershell-commands/

11 WordPress Email Deliverability Best Practices

Last updated on Mar 28, 2023 by David Abraham

Are you aware of the WordPress email deliverability best practices?

If you send any emails from a WordPress site, this is a really important topic. Email deliverability is affected by a variety of factors so this may seem tricky at first.

But the good news is, many of these factors are controllable. Following a few best practices can go a long way in helping you maintain high deliverability rates at all times.

We’ll be covering the top tips for improving WordPress email deliverability in this article. Let’s dive in!

How Do I Stop My Emails From Going to Spam in WordPress?

In WordPress, emails are usually delivered using the default PHP mailer. The problem is the PHP mailer function lacks authenticating elements in an email, which frequently leads to your emails being marked spam or blocked altogether.

The best way to stop your emails from ending up in spam is to use a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) plugin like WP Mail SMTP.

SMTP plugins help provide crucial authentication details for domains linked to a WordPress site and are an excellent way to bypass most email deliverability challenges.

In the next section, we’ll dive deeper to discover how SMTP helps and what some of the top email deliverability tactics are.

WordPress Email Deliverability Best Practices

In This Article

1. Use WP Mail SMTP

WP Mail SMTP is the best tool for fixing WordPress email deliverability challenges.

Authentication is the biggest issue with WordPress emails. As we’ve mentioned, the default WordPress PHPMailer just isn’t effective at this.

What this means is that when you send emails from a domain on a WordPress site, mailbox providers have no way of telling if the emails are really coming from your domain. This is a problem because spammers and hackers have developed ways to impersonate legitimate domains.

But with WP Mail SMTP, you can connect your WordPress site to popular SMTP mailer services like Postmark, Sendinblue, SendLayer, and more. These mailer services add proper authentication details to your emails, so that the recipient’s email server can easily verify your legitimacy as the sender.

SMTP mailers also use DNS records like DMARC, SPF, and DKIM to further increase your legitimacy and offer protection from email spoofers.

In addition to being an excellent solution for improving your email deliverability, WP SMTP also offers useful tools such as email tracking and email logs that allow you to monitor your emails right from your WordPress dashboard.

If you’re looking for different SMTP plugins, check out our list of WP Mail SMTP alternatives.

2. Track Your Sender Reputation

Sender reputation is a crucial metric that mailers use in determining the trustworthiness of a domain. A bad sender reputation will typically mean your emails will get blocked or go to spam.

The good news is that you can track the sender reputation for your domain and take the necessary steps to protect it. Here’s how to check:

Grab your IP address and head over to the Talos Intelligence Reputation Lookup site. On the homepage, pop in your email domain’s IP address. If you’re not sure what this is, you may ask your hosting service.

The tool will then generate a sender reputation report with a few different metrics, including your email reputation.

If your score is too low, you’ll know that you’ll likely have some email deliverability issues due to the poor sender reputation of your domain.

One thing you can do to fix this right away is to use a different domain for sending your emails.

But if your email reputation is good, then you’re unlikely to face any deliverability problems.

3. Ensure Your IP Address Isn’t on a Blocklist

Your IP address can end up on a blocklist for a number of reasons. One of them is simply using shared hosting.

You can check if your IP address is on a blocklist and then reach out to the service that has blocklisted your IP address and ask to have it removed. MxToolbox is an excellent tool for checking if you’ve been blocklisted and by whom.

Once they’re sure that your website doesn’t pose any security threats, your IP address may be removed from the list.

4. Track Email Statistics

Tracking your email statistics is super important because it allows you to measure how well your emails are being received by your users.

If your emails are bouncing or aren’t getting opened at all, these could be pointers to an underlying problem that you’ll want to fix immediately.

Remember, things like low engagement rates, bounced emails, and users unsubscribing from your email lists can lead to a poor sender reputation.

Fortunately, it’s easy to track your email stats using WP Mail SMTP, which you should already be using to provide authentication for your domain. WP Mail SMTP provides tracking data on emails you’ve sent right within the WordPress dashboard.

Open and click rates for WordPress emails

The data you’ll garner this way will help you modify your email campaigns to improve engagement, which is a key factor influencing domain reputation.

In addition to WP Mail SMTP, here are some more email-tracking WordPress plugins that may be helpful.

5. Consider Using Subdomains for Different Types of Emails

In general, you’ll either be sending out transactional emails—things like receipts or thank you emails, or marketing emails.

It’s a good practice to create separate subdomains for these purposes. That’s because mailing servers treat subdomains as entirely separate domains, so the reputation of one doesn’t affect that of the other.

Using a subdomain prevents unsubscribes and spam reports from your marketing campaigns from affecting the deliverability of transactional emails sent from your too domain, which often contain crucial information.

Most mailers allow you to create subdomains. However, SendLayer stands out because it automatically creates a subdomain when you sign up, in order to help protect your root domain. So you won’t have to perform any extra steps to get a subdomain with SendLayer.

If you’re a beginner and would like a little more info, here’s a comprehensive guide to get started with email subdomains.

6. Only Send Emails to Users Who’ve Opted In

This point is really important. Sending emails to users who haven’t opted-in to receive those emails is a violation of the law in certain regions.

And more importantly, when it comes to email deliverability, unsolicited emails tend to have a really high unsubscribe rate, which can get your domain blocklisted rapidly. Fortunately, this is straightforward when you use these WordPress Newsletter plugins.

Make sure that your emails are sending successfully when a user is registering on your site. See our guide on how to fix user registration emails for more info.

7. Practice Email Segmentation

We’ve just talked about only sending marketing emails to users who’ve specifically opted in to receive them.

Another thing you can do to keep the highest levels of user engagement is to send users marketing emails only about topics they’ve indicated an interest in. This is email segmentation.

By sending users emails that are more focused on their needs, you’ll likely have much better engagement and much lower unsubscribes.

8. Don’t Use a Shared Server

Shared hosting plans—where you share a server with other users are quite common, but they aren’t always a good idea. One reason for this is the fact that shared hosting plans are frequently used for spam.

When too much spam comes from one source, that IP address usually gets blocked. To prevent this, most hosting services actually block SMTP on your email server.

If you can afford it, using a virtual server is a much better setup for email deliverability and will help to cut out most email deliverability issues straightaway.

Illustration showing shared server hosting and cloud hosting ser

But if you already have your site hosted on a shared server, here’s what to do when your hosting service blocks SMTP.

9. Practice IP Warming

The quickest way to ruin your sending reputation is to send out loads of emails that then result in lots of people unsubscribing or reporting your emails as spam.

A better approach is a tactic called IP warming. Essentially, IP warming is where you gradually scale up the number and frequency of emails you send from a particular domain over an initial period.

This could be anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months. IP warming is a particularly good idea for newer domains.

And there you have it! Use these WordPress email deliverability best practices and your emails will never end up in spam again.

10. Get Users to Whitelist Your Domain’s IP Address

In addition to getting your subscribers to opt into your email lists explicitly, one additional step you can take is asking them to whitelist the IP address of your sending domain.

Whitelisting is basically setting up your mailboxes’ spam filters to allow emails from specific domains. This is a straightforward process that can usually be done within a user’s mailbox settings.

11. Don’t Send Emails From a Fake Address

One common email delivery mistake is sending emails from a fake address, different from your real email domain.

You can typically set your emails up to display any from address you want, but if this is different from your real root email domain, you’re very quickly going to find the root domain blocklisted. The best practice is to use your legitimate email domain or any subdomains related to it.

And that is it for our guide to the top email deliverability best practices! Now you can get out there and apply these tips to watch your email deliverability soar!

Next, Check Out The Best WordPress Email Plugins

We’ve just shared our list of the top email deliverability tactics for WordPress sites. Next, you might be interested in learning what some of the top tools for WordPress email are.

Fix Your WordPress Emails Now

Ready to fix your emails? Get started today with the best WordPress SMTP plugin. WP Mail SMTP Elite includes a full White Glove Setup and offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.

If this article helped you out, please follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more WordPress tips and tutorials.

Source :
https://wpmailsmtp.com/wordpress-email-deliverability-best-practices/

9 Best Google Workspace Plugins for WordPress

by David Abraham on Dec 22, 2022

Are you looking for the best Google Workspace plugins for your WordPress website?

Google Workspace (formerly G-Suite) offers various useful tools that most businesses use daily. If you have a WordPress website, you’ll be glad to learn that you can easily integrate most Google Workspace apps with WordPress using some handy plugins.

There aren’t many plugins dedicated to G-Suite, but we’ve tested a few to put together our list of the best Google Workspace WordPress plugins to use. Dive right in!

How Do I Use G-Suite in WordPress?

G-Suite or Google Workspace is way too large and complex to be integrated directly into a WordPress site. Instead, you’ll need to install specific plugins that allow you to use individual G-Suite apps on your WordPress site.

Best Google Workspace Plugins for WordPress

In This Article

1. WP Mail SMTP

WP Mail SMTP is the best WordPress Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) plugin that helps you fix delivery problems in WordPress and allows you to integrate with Google Workspace apps.

WP Mail SMTP connects with various popular SMTP mailers, including Gmail, for sending your WordPress emails.

Apart from sending your WordPress emails via Gmail as your mailer, you can also integrate Google Sheets with WP Mail SMTP.

Using this integration, you can create useful automation between Google Sheets and WP Mail SMTP using another plugin called Uncanny Automator.

For instance, WP Mail SMTP is a great tool for tracking and monitoring the performance of your WordPress emails. But you can also track email clicks and opens in a spreadsheet by integrating WP Mail SMTP with Google Sheets, allowing you to view your email data outside of your WordPress environment.

Other than these Google Workspace integrations, WP Mail SMTP also offers useful features such as detailed email logs, email reports, email failure notifications, and so on.

For WordPress beginners, or if you just don’t have the time to dedicate to working on your site, you can use WP Mail SMTPs’ white glove setup to get your emails up and running in no time.

WP Mail SMTP Pricing: WP Mail SMTP starts at $49 per year.

2. WPForms

WPForms is the best WordPress form builder, and is the easiest way to connect your forms with G-Suite.

To start with, you’ll love the flexibility and ease of use that WPForms offers when it comes to form building. But that’s not all, the plugin provides a number of helpful integrations to improve your workflow efficiency and productivity.

These include a native Google Sheets integration that makes it super easy to send entries from a form to one of your Google Sheets spreadsheets. There’s so much you can do with this integration!

For example, if you’re looking to create surveys to collect feedback from clients, staff, and so on, you’ll easily be able to do this using the WPForms surveys addon. This addon allows you to create a survey form with automated Google Sheets tracking.

And what about nonprofits? Want to track donations for better transparency? With the WPForms prebuilt donation form template, you can easily collect donations using a PayPal Commerce field or one of the other payment fields offered by WPForms.

With the Google Sheets integration, you can then automatically track donations in a spreadsheet along with all the relevant user details.

With over 500 prebuilt WPForms templates for you to choose from, there are so many more ways you can combine WPForms and Google Sheets to create powerful, convenient workflows.

The best part is you won’t even need an extra plugin like Uncanny Automator since WPForms natively supports integration with Google Sheets. To enjoy these awesome features, you’ll need a WPForms Pro or Elite license.

WPForms Pricing: To access the Google Sheets addon, you’ll need a WPForms Pro license or higher, starting at $199.50 annually.

3. AffiliateWP

AffiliateWP is the most powerful affiliate program builder and management tool for WordPress sites. If you’re building an affiliate program, you’ll be delighted to learn that you can easily integrate AffiliateWP with G-Suite for easy data management.

You’ll simply need to install Uncanny Automator, and then you can set up an Uncanny Automator recipe to save data in Google Sheets.

We’ve tried this integration out, and we found that it’s incredibly easy to set it all up. What’s more, we were able to set up a connection that allowed us both to trigger events in Google Sheets as well as a connection that allowed actions in Google Sheets to trigger events in AffiliateWP.

So, for example, you’ll be able to keep track of affiliates, new referrals, and so on in a Google Sheets spreadsheet.

You’ll also be able to do the reverse by creating new affiliates and referrals simply by updating a row in the spreadsheet. Pretty neat, right? For more details, check out this guide to integrating AffiliateWP with Google Sheets.

AffiliateWP Pricing: AffiliateWP starts at $149.50 per year.

4. Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms is a popular WordPress form builder, and is one of the top alternatives to WPForms.

Like WPForms, Formidable Forms offers a native Google Sheets integration that allows you to easily update your spreadsheets with data from your forms.

Considering how similar this is to the WPForms Google Sheets integration, it’s understandable if you’re unsure which of the two form builders is the right one for you.

If you’re a small business looking for powerful, yet easy to use forms to grow your business, we’d strongly recommend using WPForms. With over 5 million active installations, and 11k+ 5-star reviews on WordPress.org, it’s easy to see why: WPForms offers an unbeatable collection of features at extremely competitive pricing.

Formidable Forms, on the other hand, is much better suited for advanced users, with niche use cases. For example, one of Formidable Forms’ stand out features is its complex in-form calculation field.

Formidable Forms Pricing: To use the Google Sheets integration, you’ll need the Formidable Forms Business license which starts at $199.50 per year.

5. MemberPress

MemberPress is an excellent choice for building a WordPress membership site that integrates with G-Suite.

For this one, you’ll need to use Zapier to create a connection between MemberPress and Google Drive, which is an arrangement for data storage and management.

One thing we loved when we tried this connection out was the fact that it allows for two-way automations. This means that actions in either MemberPress or Google Drive can trigger events in the other.

This would allow you to automate things like creating a new row to record a new MemberPress sign-up or cancellation.

Aside from this powerful G-Suite integration, you’ll love the flexibility that MemberPress gives you in creating fully-featured online membership sites such as an online course website.

MemberPress Pricing: MemberPress starts at $179.50 for its Basic plan.

6. Uncanny Automator

Uncanny Automator is by far the best WordPress plugin for creating automations and integrations between plugins, external apps, and even multiple websites.

As you’ll have noticed, we’ve talked quite a bit about Uncanny Automator. This is because it is such a powerful plugin that offers tons of ways to connect WordPress sites to G-Suite apps.

With Uncanny Automator installed on your site, you’ll be able to create rules called recipes, that allow for the automation of the functions of several plugins, apps, or websites.

Some of the major apps you can connect your site to using Uncanny Automator include Google Sheets, Gmail, Google Drive, and more. Now here’s some really good news: you can download Uncanny Automator for free from the WordPress plugin directory, with 1,000 connections to get you started.

Uncanny Automator Pricing: Paid Uncanny Automator licenses start at $149 per year.

7. Sugar Calendar

Sugar Calendar is the top WordPress event management plugin. Looking to add booking functionality to your site, sell tickets for events, and so on?

This is the plugin to use. Sugar Calendar integrates quite nicely with Google Calendar and other Calendar apps using Sugar Calendar’s Calendar Feeds addon. With this integration setup, your users will be able to create events and sync data for these events with Google Calendar.

This integration is the perfect way for users to schedule events, such as appointments on your site while allowing everyone on your team to easily collaborate to view and manage these bookings on Google Calendar.

When we tried this plugin out, we loved how easy it was to do useful things like create recurring events, specify time zones for specific events, use custom formatting and translation, and so on. Sugar Calendar is also translation ready, which is a huge plus.

Sugar Calendar Pricing: You’ll need the Calendar Feeds addon, which is available for free with the Professional license that starts at $199 per year.

8. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is the number 1 WordPress lead generation plugin and the easiest way to create opt-in forms in WordPress.

What’s more, you can easily connect OptinMonster and Google Sheets using Uncanny Automator. This connection will allow you to automatically send entries to a Google spreadsheet when users submit an opt-in form.

In addition to being able to integrate OptinMonster with Google sheets, you’ll love lots of the features on offer, including things like the easy-to-use drag-and-drop form builder, geo-location targeting, exit-intent technology, and so much more.

OptinMonster Pricing: OptinMonster starts at 9$ per month (billed annually) for its Basic plan.

9. UpdraftPlus

UpdraftPlus is one of the best WordPress plugins for creating backups of your website. Taking regular backups of your site is one of the most important WordPress maintenance practices to do regularly.

Fortunately, plugins like UpdraftPlus make it easy to automate this process. Once you’ve chosen the backup frequency you prefer, all you have to do is keep up with backup reports, which will be delivered to our email.

And if you’re looking for a way to integrate UpdraftPlus with G-Suite, the answer is yes! UpdraftPlus will allow you to select from a number of destinations for your backup files, which include several useful G-Suite apps like Gmail and Google Drive.

UpdraftPlus Pricing: UpdraftPlus premium starts at $70 per year.

And that’s it for our list of the top 9 WordPress G-Suite plugins! Whatever your needs, one of these plugins is bound to serve you well!

Next, Try These Top Zapier Alternatives

Zapier is one of the top tools for optimizing digital workflows. But it’s not the best tool for every situation. Some other tools, like Uncanny Automator, offer better solutions for WordPress sites, and there are other options to consider too.

Here’s our list of the top alternatives to Zapier for productivity. You may also enjoy reading our guide to tracking email opens in Google Sheets.

Fix Your WordPress Emails Now

Ready to fix your emails? Get started today with the best WordPress SMTP plugin. WP Mail SMTP Elite includes a full White Glove Setup and offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.

If this article helped you out, please follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more WordPress tips and tutorials.

Source :
https://wpmailsmtp.com/google-workspace-plugins-for-wordpress/

9 Best Anti-Spam Plugins for WordPress (2023)

by David Abraham on Jan 5, 2023

Looking for the top anti-spam plugins for WordPress?

WordPress spam can be tricky to deal with. And while there are lots of plugins that promise to help, not all work so well.

We’ve taken a look at the most popular WordPress anti-spam plugins and created a list of the plugins that we think work best.

Is There a Free Spam Blocker?

There are several free spam blockers. These include multi-platform tools like Google reCAPTCHA and hCaptcha and platform-specific tools like WPForms Lite, which is the best free spam blocker for WordPress forms.

Free spam blockers are a good option to have, but sometimes you’ll need more powerful tools to defend your site from spam. The anti-spam tools we’ll cover below include a nice range of free and paid anti-spam tools for WordPress.

Let’s get into it!

Best Anti-Spam Plugins for WordPress

In This Article

1.WPForms

WPForms is the number 1 WordPress form builder and is a favorite for users looking to protect their forms from spam.

WPForms offers an impressive collection of anti-spam features to help you deal with spam once and for all.

The first line of defense is a number of native WPForms anti-spam features. These include the WPForms anti-spam token that adds a hidden cryptographic string to form submissions made by human users. Bots can’t imitate this and when forms are submitted without it, they’ll be marked as spam.

Additionally, WPForms allows you to block known spam sources by filtering form entries by keyword and country.

If your forms have been targeted by specific email addresses or IP addresses from certain countries, this is a creative way to get rid of the problem.

Another native anti-spam solution you’ll love is the WPForms-Akismet integration which allows you to use Akismet on your forms.

Toggle this button to enable Akismet anti-spam protection

Akismet works in two clever ways: first, it compares form entries with its huge database of known spam sources and automatically flags suspicious form entries. Secondly, it scans user on-page behavior to determine if users are likely to be human or bots and flags these for your review as well.

Finally, you can also use one of the 3 CAPTCHA tools available with WPForms.

There is the WPForms Custom Captcha which allows you to set custom math problems for users to solve.

Custom Captcha is an easy anti-spam tool to use, and since you can set your own math problems, you can easily determine the difficulty levels of the CAPTCHA challenge. You’ll need a WPForms Pro license or above to use Custom Captcha.

In addition to this, you can opt for either Google reCAPTCHA or hCaptcha, both of which are powerful and popular anti-spam solutions.

In fact, WPForms even supports the new Cloudflare Turnstile captcha service, which is a non-intrusive and super user-friendly anti-spam solution

Considering the impressive range of features on offer, WPForms is the clear leader when it comes to anti-spam WordPress plugins for protecting your forms.

WPForms Pricing: WPForms Pro license costs 159.60 annually.

2. Akismet

If you have a WordPress website, chances are you already have Akismet installed. Akismet is an anti-spam plugin made by the team behind WordPress.com, so it comes pre-installed with many WordPress installations.

Akismet is quite powerful and is a great way to protect your site from spam. Aside from using it along with WPForms for form protection, you can also use Akismet on its own to protect your comment sections, user registration pages, and so on from spambots.

We particularly love Akismet for its unobtrusive anti-spam protection that allows legitimate visitors to use your site without interruption.

If you’d like to try Akismet, here’s our guide to filtering contact form spam with Akismet to help you get started.

Akismet Pricing: Akismet is free to use for nonprofits, and individual users can pay what they’d like. For commercial use, pricing starts at $8.33 per month, billed annually.

3. WP Armour

WP Armour is one of the more popular WordPress anti-spam solutions with a distinctive anti-spam approach.

WP Armour works by luring bots into filling out a hidden javascript field that human users cannot see. This is called a spam honeypot.

If you already have WPForms and Akismet, which we’d recommend, you won’t need WP Armour, but it’s good to note that WP Armour is also compatible with WPForms, along with some other major WordPress form builders.

This gives you some additional options if you decide to try an Akismet alternative.

WP Armour pricing: WP Armour is free to get started with.

4. Titan Anti-Spam & Security

Titan Anti-Spam & Security is another top-rated WordPress anti-spam plugin. We’d consider this plugin a close like-for-like alternative to Akismet as it works in a similar way.

Titan Anti-Spam & Security works in the background to screen comments by comparing them with its database of spam sources. The exciting thing about this plugin is that it is capable of updating itself frequently, so its ability to block new forms of spam is constantly improving.

While this makes it a really solid option to consider, we recommend that you stick with Akismet as it has a much larger database of known spam patterns, so it offers a wider blanket of spam protection.

On the other hand, it should be noted that Titan anti-spam & Security isn’t just an anti-spam plugin. It also offers some useful WordPress security features like brute force protection and a malware scanner.

If you’re looking for comprehensive WordPress protection, this would be a good plugin to try. Otherwise, just stick to Akismet and WPForms.

Titan Anti Spam & Security Pricing: Titan Anti-Spam & Security is free to get started with.

5. Zero Spam for WordPress

Zero Spam for WordPress is a well-featured anti-spam plugin for WordPress that covers a few different anti-spam features.

First, like Akismet, this plugin scans comments and other user inputs on your site to compare them with its spam database. But that’s not all. It also allows you to block specific IP addresses, countries, cities, and so on if you’ve been getting spam from those places.

This is a good range of anti-spam features, and as a plus, the plugin works in the background, allowing for a good, seamless user experience.

Zero Spam for WordPress pricing: Zero Spam for WordPress is free to get started with.

6. Antispam Bee

Antispam Bee is a popular spam fighter plugin that also works very similarly to Akismet. It helps to beat WordPress spam by scanning user-submitted content and comparing it with its database of proven spam.

One of its handy features is that it allows country-specific or region-specific blocks. The core anti-spam features offered are similar to quite a few plugins on this list, but Antispam Bee has one feature we found exceptional.

With this plugin, you’ll be able to block or create exceptions for user-submitted content in specific languages. Since spam is a global problem, you’re likely to find this really helpful if you’re being targeted by spam in a certain language.

Antispam Bee Pricing: Antispam Bee is free to get started with.

7. Captcha by BestWebSoft

Captcha by BestWebSoft is a WordPress CAPTCHA plugin for protecting your site from spam.

It offers a decent range of protection for comments and forms, registration pages, password reset pages, and so on.

In our testing, we liked the fact that the plugin also offers a broad range of CAPTCHA types including invisible CAPTCHA, Math CAPTCHA, character recognition, and slide CAPTCHA.

And while CAPTCHA tools aren’t always the best when it comes to providing a good user experience, this plugin allows you to hide CAPTCHA from registered users, which is a really useful feature to have.

If you’d like to use CAPTCHA to protect your forms, then we’d recommend sticking with WPForms. But if it’s the other areas of your site you’re more concerned about, then Captcha by BestWebSoft is a good option to consider.

Captcha by BestWebSoft pricing: Captcha by BestWebSoft is free to get started with.

8. CleanTalk Anti-Spam

Cleantalk is a spam protection tool that can be used with multiple web development platforms, including WordPress.

On your WordPress site, the plugin works by scanning user inputs on your forms, comments, registration pages, and so on to determine if they are spam. Spam entries are then blocked.

The key feature we found with this plugin was how easy it was to set up and manage spam protection settings. From start to finish, the entire process takes just a few minutes.

One other feature you might find interesting is the word censor feature that allows you to block certain words that you don’t want your users to see. These could be used to block competitor names, swear words, and so on.

Cleantalk pricing: Cleantalk is free to get started with.

9. WP Cerber Security

WP Cerber Security is a WordPress anti-spam and security plugin that offers comprehensive protection for your site.

Unlike most of the plugins we’ve talked about, with the exception of WPForms, WP Cerber relies on Google reCAPTCHA and invisible CAPTCHA for anti-spam protection.

Google invisible reCAPTCHA works in the background to screen users based on their behavior and presents an actual CAPTCHA challenge only when it deems user behavior to be suspicious.

This can mean some interruptions in user experience, but it also helps to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks.

If you like the idea of using Google invisible CAPTCHA, remember, you can use this with WPForms to protect your forms too.

WP Cerber Security pricing: WP Cerber Security is free to get started with.

And that’s it for our list of the top anti-spam plugins for WordPress!

Our Verdict: Which Is the Best Anti-Spam Plugin for WordPress?

Which anti-spam is best? That depends on your goals.

To protect your forms, WPForms is hands down the best anti-spam plugin. Remember, WPForms helps to protect your site from spam using a range of tools which include the:

WPForms anti-spam token,
Country and keyword blockers
Akismet integration
WPForms Custom Captcha
Google reCAPTCHA
hCaptcha.

For sitewide anti-spam coverage, we’d say combining WPForms and Akismet would be a superb idea.

Next, Apply These Email Deliverability Best Practices

If you have a WordPress website, you’ll likely send lots of marketing or transactional emails. WordPress isn’t best suited for this by default, but with a few simple tips, you can easily set up your WordPress site for effective email delivery. Here’s the full guide in our post on the top WordPress email deliverability practices.

Also, check out our list of anti-spam honeypot alternatives if you’re looking for additional spam filter tools for your site.

Fix Your WordPress Emails Now

Ready to fix your emails? Get started today with the best WordPress SMTP plugin. WP Mail SMTP Elite includes a full White Glove Setup and offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.

If this article helped you out, please follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more WordPress tips and tutorials.

Source :
https://wpmailsmtp.com/best-anti-spam-plugin-wordpress/

How to Set Up WordPress Email Logging [Status + ALL Content]

by Renee DeCoskey on May 11, 2023

Do you want to log WordPress emails across your site?

Email logs allow you to record, track, troubleshoot, and resend emails sent from WordPress.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to enable email logs using WP Mail SMTP.

In This Article

Log Your WordPress Emails Now

How Do I Check Email Logs in WordPress?

You can view your email logs and sent emails from your WordPress dashboard using the WP Mail SMTP plugin.

Logging WordPress emails is really simple with WP Mail SMTP because it displays the status of your outgoing emails in a log file or dashboard widget.

It’s more advanced than other email logging plugins because it can track the status all the way to the recipient’s mailbox. And it can also show you opens and clicks.

That means you can see a true picture of your email deliverability right in your WordPress dashboard.

WP Mail SMTP also adds a detailed email log page to your WordPress admin area. From the email log page, you can:

View headers: WP Mail SMTP saves all of the technical information associated with the email.
Filter and search: Use the powerful filters to find and track your most important emails.
Print email logs: Every email log can be printed or saved as a PDF.
Log email contents: Save the message as well as the email headers (optional).
Track email opens and clicks: See open and click data for every email you send from WordPress.
Resend failed emails: Resend in bulk or individually, or forward to a different address.
Store attachments: Save the attachment file along with the log.
Export sent emails in CSV, XLSX, or EML format.
View multisite email logs on separate pages easily.

Thanks to these features, logging WordPress emails is not only easy but also very powerful with WP Mail SMTP.

How to Enable WordPress Email Logging

To get full WordPress email logging on your site, you’ll need the WP Mail SMTP Pro license or higher.

Let’s see how you can set up the WP Mail SMTP log on your site.

1. Install WP Mail SMTP

We’re going to use the WP Mail SMTP plugin to log your WordPress emails. WP Mail SMTP is used by 3+ million WordPress users to improve email deliverability and tracking.

To install WP Mail SMTP, download the zip file from your WP Mail SMTP account. You’ll find it in the Downloads tab.

Download WP Mail SMTP to fix WPForms contact form not sending email

Next, open up your WordPress dashboard. Head to the Plugins page and upload the zip file to install it.

If you’re not sure how to do this, check out how to install a plugin in WordPress.

As soon as you activate the plugin, the WP Mail SMTP Setup Wizard will open.

Choose Your Email Service Provider

Now we can set up your chosen SMTP provider using the Wizard.

Click the Let’s Get Started button to begin.

Start the WP Mail SMTP setup wizard to fix WPforms not sending email

On the next screen, click the mailer you want to use from the list.

WP Mail SMTP supports a ton of popular email services, including many free options.

Logging the Email Delivery Status

Most email logging plugins will tell you if the email Sent or Failed. But they can’t give you any information about what happened after that.

Using WP Mail SMTP for logging WordPress emails provides you with a lot more insight into your delivery status. With WP Mail SMTP, you can unlock 2 additional status reports: Unconfirmed (Waiting) and Confirmed (Delivered).

Here’s what these statuses will tell you:

Sent means that WordPress successfully generated and sent the email.
Failed means that the email wasn’t sent. For example, you’ll see this if there’s a problem with your SMTP server or some other configuration issue.
Unconfirmed means that the email was sent and WP Mail SMTP is waiting for the status.
Confirmed means that the email was sent and delivered to the recipient’s mailbox.

Selected email providers support Unconfirmed and Confirmed. Here’s a chart to show each status and the mailers that support them:

Email Service	Failed	Sent	Waiting / Unconfirmed	Delivered / Confirmed
SendLayer	✓	✓	✓	✓
SMTP.com	✓	✓	✓	✓
Sendinblue	✓	✓	✓	✓
Amazon SES	✓	✓
Google Workspace / Gmail	✓	✓
Mailgun	✓	✓	✓	✓
Microsoft 365 / Outlook.com	✓	✓
Postmark	✓	✓	✓	✓
SendGrid	✓	✓
SparkPost	✓	✓	✓	✓
Zoho Mail	✓	✓
Other SMTP	✓	✓

So if you want the best possible email tracking, we recommend that you use WP Mail SMTP with a transactional mailer like SendLayer, Sendinblue, SMTP.com, Mailgun, Postmark, or SparkPost.

When you’ve chosen your mailer, jump to our documentation and continue the setup steps:

Mailers available in all versions	Mailers in WP Mail SMTP Pro
SendLayer	Amazon SES
SMTP.com	Microsoft 365 / Outlook.com
Sendinblue	Zoho Mail
Google Workspace / Gmail
Mailgun
Postmark
SendGrid
SparkPost
Other SMTP

Come back to this guide when you’re ready.

Need a hand?

Our Elite license includes White Glove Setup.

In the final step, be sure to turn on Detailed Email Logs and Weekly Email Summary.

Enable WordPress email logs and weekly summary

Detailed Email Logs will track your email headers and delivery status. Weekly Email Summary will send you a weekly email report.

For the best possible data, we recommend that you log the content of your sent emails as well.

2. Log All Email Content

As well as tracking the header and delivery status of each email sent from WordPress, you can save a copy of the entire content of the messages sent from your site.

This can be helpful when troubleshooting. For example, if you have an email customizer plugin for WooCommerce, you could save a copy of your order emails to make sure they’re formatted correctly.

Let’s turn on complete email logging on your WordPress site. There are 2 ways to do this. You can set this up in the Setup Wizard, or you can achieve the same results in the plugin settings.

Let’s start with the Setup Wizard.

Using the Setup Wizard to Log All Email Content

You’ll go through the Setup Wizard when you first register for WP Mail SMTP. You can always get back to the Setup Wizard, however, by clicking WP Mail SMTP » Settings in the left sidebar menu.

You’ll see the general settings on the screen with the option to launch the setup wizard.

The first thing you’ll do is select your mailer of choice. You’ll configure the mailer settings in step 2.

Step 3 is when you get to enable email features. Your 4 options are Improved Email Deliverability, Email Error Tracking, Detailed Email Logs, and Instant Email Alerts.

Click on Detailed Email Logs to get set up.

Notice that when you check Detailed Email Logs, it automatically adds options for Complete Email Reports and Weekly Email Summary.

On the next screen, you’ll configure your email logs.

You want to check the option to store the content for all sent emails. This must be done if you want to resend any of your emails. Note, however, that this means you will be storing all email content. This might include data, passwords, and personal details.

On this page, you can also opt to save attachments from your emails to your WordPress uploads folder, track when emails are opened, and track when links are clicked in your emails.

After this step, the Setup Wizard will test your connection and let you know if there are any potential issues.

While most of the setup process can be completed through the Setup Wizard, you will still need to go to WP Mail SMTP » Settings » Email Log to adjust settings for webhooks and log retention period.

Access settings for webhooks and the log retention period via email log settings

Once you’ve updated those settings, you’re finished setting up email logging through the Setup Wizard.

Using the Plugin Settings to Log All Email Content

Whether you didn’t use the Setup Wizard when you started or you just want to go back and make changes, you can also use the plugin settings to set up email logging.

First, head to the Settings page in the plugin.

Now click the Email Log tab to open your WordPress email log settings.

Scroll down on this page and check the box next to Log Email Content.

A reminder that this is an advanced option, so there are a couple of things to keep in mind:

Logging the body of emails saves the content in your WordPress database. We recommend that you install a WordPress security plugin with 2-factor authentication so that your site is secure.
Your database will grow. Over time, your WordPress database will get larger as you log the contents of all emails sent from your website.

To avoid any disk space issues, you can restrict the size of your email log. If you decrease the Log Retention Period, older email logs will be deleted automatically.

Now let’s take a closer look at the log file inside your WordPress dashboard.

3. View WordPress Email Logs

Now that you’ve set up WordPress email logs, every email sent using the wp_mail() function will be logged. You don’t need to use a separate WordPress plugin for this, which is great because you can avoid any plugin conflicts that may affect your email deliverability.

If your email provider supports all of the statuses we talked about, it’s also reporting the status of every email: Sent, Failed, and (if supported) Delivered.

When we installed the plugin, the Setup Wizard generated a test email, so that’ll be in your log already. You can generate additional test emails in the Tools menu if you want to.

Now let’s take a look at the email logs. In your WordPress admin menu, open up WP Mail SMTP » Email Log.

WordPress email log menu item in WP Mail SMTP

Since your installation is new, you might not have many logs to look at yet. We’ll show how it’ll look when it’s been running for a while.

Let’s start by filtering the log by date. In this example, we want to find any emails that failed on April 20.

WP Mail SMTP’s email log has a datepicker at the top so you can easily view the log files for a specific date or series of dates.

In the image below, we’ve used it to look for emails sent from our WordPress website between April 14th and April 21st.

Because we’re using a transactional mailer, we can see a Delivered status with a green circle and checkmark for the first 3 emails, so we know those definitely reached the recipient’s mailbox.

One email is marked with a red dot, so we know that one Failed. If we hover over that line, we can see options to View Log or Delete.

Let’s click on View Log to see more details about the logged email.

From the individual log page, we can:

Print the email log, or save it as a PDF
Export this log as a CSV, EML, or Excel file.

Exporting as EML will export the full email content if you’ve got that option enabled. We’ll show you how that works in the next section of this article.

The email log also tells you which plugin generated the email.

You can click Resend to resend any email and customize the To address.

This can be helpful for resending new user activations and password reset emails.

At the bottom of the log, the Technical Details dropdown will show you the full headers for more detailed troubleshooting.

We can also see the exact error that the email provider returned:

In this case, the recipient was receiving too many emails and has hit their Gmail receiving limit. So we can be sure that it wasn’t a problem with our email provider or settings.

From the individual log file page, we can print log files in Normal or Compact view. Compact view is helpful if you have a large log file and you want to save paper or reduce the size of the PDF.

Back on the main log screen, let’s look at the other ways to manage WordPress email logs.

The search bar lets you narrow down the list of email logs. You can use multiple search criteria to keep filtering the list until you find what you need.

For example, we already filtered by date. Next, we can search in the Subject and Headers to see if we have any other username and password emails that failed during the same week.

Search subject and headers in WordPress email log

The new search is combined with the date search, and you can see both filters in the line above the log screen.

We can click the X icons to remove any part of the search if we want to broaden the results.

Remove date filter from email log search

These filtering and searching tools make it easy to find any email and find out if it was sent and if it was also delivered (if your mailer supports the Delivered status).

Let’s move on and see how to see if your emails are being opened.

4. Track Email Opens and Clicks

Now that you know for sure that your emails are being delivered, you’ll also want to check if the recipient is actually reading and interacting with the message.

WP Mail SMTP Pro not only assists with logging WordPress emails, but it goes out and beyond to track open and click rates for every HTML email sent from your site.

WordPress email tracking is especially handy if you’re selling online courses or sending newsletters from WordPress.

First, head to the plugin’s Settings page.

And now click Email Log at the top to open your WordPress email log settings.

You’ll want to scroll down and enable these 2 settings:

Open Email Tracking
Click Link Tracking

Now you’ll be able to see open and click tracking data next to each individual email log.

Open and click details in WordPress email log

And you can also see an overview from the main email log screen.

If you’re a Pro customer, you can get full open rates and click-through rates in your Email Report.

Keep in mind that open and click tracking relies on a tracking pixel. That means it works with most HTML emails sent from a live WordPress site, but might not work with SMTP on localhost until you publish your site on the internet.

Now we’ve looked at click and open tracking, let’s look at some more data we can log.

5. Log Attachments Sent From WordPress

WP Mail SMTP Pro allows you to save a copy of attachments sent out from your WordPress site.

For example, if you’re sending PDF invoices using a WooCommerce plugin, you can save each invoice for your own reference.

To do this, you’ll want to open up your WP Mail SMTP settings page again. Then click Email Log at the top to open the email log settings as we did before.

Now be sure to turn on all 3 of these options:

Enable Log
Log Email Content
Save Attachments

Now each email sent from your site will be saved in WordPress along with any files originally attached.

You can download the file or resend the email to forward it.

If you want, you can also export the data, which we’ll look at next.

6. Export WordPress Email Logs to CSV, EML, or XLSX

The email log export tool in WP Mail SMTP lets you export email logs and customize the fields that are included in the file.

This is an awesome way to get your email logging data out of WordPress so you can analyze it in other tools and dashboards.

For example, you could track your email deliverability alongside your WooCommerce store activity, or create your own custom reports for agency clients.

To generate an Excel or CSV export file, head to WP Mail SMTP » Tools.

From the tabs across the top, click Export.

At the top, you can choose the file format and select the basic information to include.

WP Mail SMTP export - common information

Below that, you can pick more information and filter your search.

WP Mail SMTP export information - additional filters

So in total, an XLSX or CSV WordPress email log export can include any combination of these fields:

Common Information	Additional Information
To address	Status
From address	CC
From name	BCC
Subject	Headers
Body	Mailer
Created date	Error details
Number of attachments	Log ID
Attachments	Opened
	Clicked

Additionally, you can also filter the export file by:

Exact date or date range
Email address
Subject or header text
Content

Keep in mind that exporting the Body or searching the Content will only work if you’re logging the contents of the emails sent from your site.

And that’s it! Now you know how to log your WordPress emails so you can track the status and generate your own deliverability reports.

Log Your WordPress Emails Now

Next, Send Email From a Gmail Alias in WordPress

Now you’ve got WP Mail SMTP, you can send different contact form notifications from as many Gmail aliases as you like. You can use the Force From Email setting to use 1 email for everything, or pick a default alias and use the others when you need to.

No matter which Gmail alias you use, WP Mail SMTP will automatically add the right authentication.

Dropdown for alias in WP Mail SMTP Wizard

To learn more about this awesome feature, check out how to use a Gmail alias in WordPress.

Also, if you’re looking to expand your WordPress email capabilities, see our list of the best WordPress email plugins.

Ready to log your emails? Get started today with the best WordPress SMTP plugin. WP Mail SMTP Elite includes full White Glove Setup and offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.

If this article helped you out, please follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more WordPress tips and tutorials.

Source :
https://wpmailsmtp.com/log-emails-wordpress/

Netgear Routers’ Flaws Expose Users to Malware, Remote Attacks, and Surveillance

As many as five security flaws have been disclosed in Netgear RAX30 routers that could be chained to bypass authentication and achieve remote code execution.

“Successful exploits could allow attackers to monitor users’ internet activity, hijack internet connections, and redirect traffic to malicious websites or inject malware into network traffic,” Claroty security researcher Uri Katz said in a report.

Additionally, a network-adjacent threat actor could also weaponize the flaws to access and control networked smart devices like security cameras, thermostats, smart locks; tamper with router settings, and even use a compromised network to launch attacks against other devices or networks.

The list of flaws, which were demonstrated at the Pwn2Own hacking competition held at Toronto in December 2022, is as follows –

CVE-2023-27357 (CVSS score: 6.5) – Missing Authentication Information Disclosure Vulnerability
CVE-2023-27368 (CVSS score: 8.8) – Stack-based Buffer Overflow Authentication Bypass Vulnerability
CVE-2023-27369 (CVSS score: 8.8) – Stack-based Buffer Overflow Authentication Bypass Vulnerability
CVE-2023-27370 (CVSS score: 5.7) – Device Configuration Cleartext Storage Information Disclosure Vulnerability
CVE-2023-27367 (CVSS score: 8.0) – Command Injection Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

A proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit chain illustrated by the industrial cybersecurity firm shows that it’s possible to string the flaws — CVE-2023-27357, CVE-2023-27369, CVE-2023-27368, CVE-2023-27370, and CVE-2023-27367 (in that order) — to extract the device serial number and ultimately obtain root access to it.

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“These five CVEs can be chained together to compromise affected RAX30 routers, the most severe of which enable pre-authentication remote code execution on the device,” Katz noted.

Users of Netgear RAX30 routers are advised to update to firmware version 1.0.10.94 released by the networking company on April 7, 2023, to address the flaws and mitigate potential risks.

Source :
https://thehackernews.com/2023/05/netgear-routers-flaws-expose-users-to.html

Why High Tech Companies Struggle with SaaS Security

It’s easy to think high-tech companies have a security advantage over other older, more mature industries. Most are unburdened by 40 years of legacy systems and software. They draw some of the world’s youngest, brightest digital natives to their ranks, all of whom consider cybersecurity issues their entire lives.

Perhaps it is due to their familiarity with technology that causes them to overlook SaaS security configurations. During the last Christmas holiday season, Slack had some private code stolen from its GitHub repository. According to Slack, the stolen code didn’t impact production, and no customer data was taken.

Still, the breach should serve as a warning sign to other tech companies. Stolen tokens allowed threat actors to access the GitHub instance and download the code. If this type of attack can happen to Slack on GitHub, it can happen to any high-tech company. Tech companies must take SaaS security seriously to prevent resources from leaking or being stolen.

App Breaches: A Recurring Story#

Slack’s misfortune with GitHub wasn’t the first time a GitHub breach occurred. Back in April, a stolen OAuth token from Heroku and Travis CI-maintained OAuth applications were stolen, leading to an attacker downloading data from dozens of private code repositories.

MailChimp, a SaaS app used to manage email campaigns, experienced three breaches over 12 months spanning 2022-23. Customer data was stolen by threat actors, who used that data in attacks against cryptocurrency companies.

SevenRooms had over 400 GB of sensitive data stolen from its CRM platform, PayPal notified customers in January that unauthorized parties accessed accounts using stolen login credentials, and Atlassian saw employee data and corporate data exposed in a February breach.

Clearly, tech companies aren’t immune to data breaches. Protecting their proprietary code, customer data, and employee records that are stored within SaaS applications should be a top priority.

Reliance on SaaS Applications#

A strong SaaS posture is important for any company, but it is particularly important for organizations that store their proprietary code in SaaS applications. This code is especially tempting to threat actors, who would like nothing more than to monetize their efforts and ransom the code back to its creators.

Tech companies also tend to rely on a large number and mix of SaaS applications, from collaboration platforms to sales and marketing tools, legal and finance, data warehouses, cybersecurity solutions, and many more – making it even more challenging to secure the entire stack.

Tech employees heavily depend on SaaS apps to do their day-to-day work; this requires security teams to strictly govern identities and their access. Moreover, these users tend to log into their SaaS apps through different devices to maintain efficiency, which may pose a risk to the organization based on the device’s level of hygiene. On top of this, tech employees tend to connect third-party applications to the core stack without thinking twice, granting these apps high risk scopes.

Learn how Adaptive Shield can help you secure your entire SaaS stack.

Controlling SaaS Access After Layoffs#

The high-tech industry is known for periods of hyper-growth, followed by downsizing. Over the past few months, we’ve seen Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Shopify and others announce layoffs.

Deprovisioning employees from SaaS applications is a critical element in data security. While much of the offboarding of employees is automated, SaaS applications that are not connected to the company directory don’t automatically revoke access. Even those applications that are connected may have admin accounts that are outside the company’s SSO. While the primary SSO account may be disconnected, the user’s admin access through the app’s login screen is often accessible.

Organic Hyper Growth and M&As#

At the same time, the industry is ripe with mergers and acquisition announcements. As a result of M&As, the acquiring company needs to create a baseline for SaaS security and monitor all SaaS stacks of merged or acquired companies, while enabling business continuity. Whether the hyper growth is organic or through an M&A, organizations need to be able to ensure access is right-sized for their users, at scale and rapidly.

Identity Threat Detection & Response#

The majority of data breaches impacting tech companies stem from stolen credentials and tokens. The threat actor enters the system through the front door, using valid credentials of the user.

Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) picks up suspicious events that would otherwise go unnoticed. An SSPM (SaaS Security Posture Management) solution with threat detection engines in place will alert when there is an Indicator of Compromise (IOC). These IOCs are based on cross-referencing of activities such as user geolocation, time, frequency, recurring attempts to login, excessive activities and more.

Securing High Tech’s SaaS#

Maintaining a high SaaS security posture is challenging for high tech companies, who may mistakenly believe they are equipped and well trained to prevent SaaS attacks. SaaS Security Posture Management is essential to preventing SaaS breaches, while an SSPM with ITDR capabilities will go a long way toward ensuring that your SaaS data is secure.

Learn how Adaptive Shield can help you secure your entire SaaS stack.

Source :
https://thehackernews.com/2023/05/why-high-tech-companies-struggle-with.html

Tip – How to Disable Cloud-Based Clipboard (WIN+V) History in Windows 10

This tutorial will help you in disabling cloud-based clipboard (WIN+V) history feature in Windows 10. Once you follow the steps given in this guide, you’ll be able to prevent or restrict Windows 10 as well as other users from enabling cloud-clipboard feature from Settings and accessing your copied data from cloud-clipboard fly-out.

Newer versions of Windows 10 come with new cloud-based Clipboard feature which allows users to copy and paste multiple items from the clipboard. Users can copy multiple items to the new clipboard and then they can select and paste desired copied items from cloud-clipboard to anywhere they want such as Notepad, MS Word, etc.

The new cloud-based clipboard can be used by pressing WIN+V keys together. To copy items you need to use the good old Ctrl+C hotkey but to paste the copied text from new cloud-based clipboard, you need to use the new WIN+V keyboard shortcut.

When you press WIN+V keys together to access cloud-clipboard, Windows 10 launches the new cloud-based clipboard fly-out as shown in following screenshot:

To paste an item, you need to click on the item and it’ll be immediately pasted at current cursor position in your program window.

Users can enable/disable cloud-clipboard using Windows 10 Settings app. Open Settings app (WIN+I) and go to System -> Clipboard section. Now you can turn on/off Clipboard History option to allow/disallow Windows 10 from copying items to new cloud-clipboard as shown in following screenshot:

Customize_Cloud_Based_Clipboard_Settings_Windows_10.png

We posted a detailed tutorial reviewing cloud-based clipboard feature at following link:

[Tip] How to Configure and Use Cloud-Based Clipboard (WIN+V) Feature in Windows 10

Although it’s a good feature but many Windows 10 users may not like the new cloud-clipboard feature and they may want to disable or deactivate it due to privacy and security reasons.

In this tutorial, we’ll tell you how to permanently disable cloud-clipboard feature in Windows 10 so that no one can access your copied data by pressing WIN+V hotkey.

Once deactivated or disabled, when anyone will try to open Settings -> System -> Clipboard page in your Windows 10 device, he’ll notice that Clipboard History option is grayed out i.e. disabled and he can’t change it. So users will be unable to activate or enable cloud-clipboard feature without your permission. Also a message “Some of these settings are hidden or managed by your organization” will be displayed at the top of the page as shown in following screenshot:

Cloud_Clipboard_History_Disabled_Grayed_Out_Windows_10_Settings.png

If anyone will try to press WIN+V hotkey in Notepad or any other program to access cloud-clipboard feature, the new clipboard fly-out will open blank or empty. Windows 10 will no longer store your copied items to cloud-clipboard.

Following methods will help you in disabling cloud-clipboard feature in Windows 10 operating system:

METHOD 1: Using Group Policy Editor

1. Press WIN+R keys together to launch RUN dialog box. Now type gpedit.msc and press Enter. It’ll open Group Policy Editor.

2. Now go to:

Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System -> OS Policies

3. In right-side pane, look for following options:

Allow Clipboard History

Allow Clipboard synchronization across devices

4. Double-click on both options one by one and set both of them to Disabled.

Disable_Cloud_Clipboard_History_Windows_10_Group_Policy.png

That’s it. It’ll permanently disable cloud-clipboard feature in Windows 10.

PS: In future, if you decide to restore default settings and restore cloud-clipboard feature, set the above mentioned options to Not Configured again in Group Policy Editor.

METHOD 2: Using Registry Editor

If you are using Home edition of Windows, you’ll not be able to run gpedit.msc command because this edition doesn’t come with Group Policy Editor.

If you can’t use or don’t want to use Group Policy Editor, you can take help of Registry Editor for the same task. Just follow these simple steps:

1. Press WIN+R keys together to launch RUN dialog box. Now type regedit and press Enter. It’ll open Registry Editor.

2. Now go to following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System

3. In right-side pane, right-click on empty area and select New -> DWORD (32-bit) Value option. Set the new DWORD name as AllowClipboardHistory and keep its value to 0

Again right-click on empty area and select New -> DWORD (32-bit) Value option. Set the new DWORD name as AllowCrossDeviceClipboard and keep its value to 0

Disable_Cloud_Clipboard_History_Windows_10_Registry_Editor.png

4. Close Registry Editor. You may need to restart your computer to take effects.

That’s it. It’ll completely disable cloud-clipboard feature in Windows 10.

PS: In future, if you decide to restore default settings and restore cloud-clipboard feature, delete the DWORD values created in above mentioned steps from Registry Editor.

Also Check:

[Fix] Some Settings are Managed by Your Organization in Windows 10

You are here: Home » Windows 10 » [Tip] How to Disable Cloud-Based Clipboard (WIN+V) History in Windows 10

Published in: Windows 10

About the author: Vishal Gupta (also known as VG) has been awarded with Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award. He holds Masters degree in Computer Applications (MCA). He has written several tech articles for popular newspapers and magazines and has also appeared in tech shows on various TV channels.

Source :
https://www.askvg.com/tip-how-to-disable-cloud-based-clipboard-winv-history-in-windows-10/

How to automatically generate email summaries with Zapier and OpenAI

By Michael Toth · May 1, 2023

Keeping up with your email inbox can be a daunting task. It’s easy to get bogged down in long, rambling messages or get overwhelmed by a million unimportant emails and miss the important information buried within. Fortunately, there’s a solution that can help.

Do more with OpenAI

Discover more ways to add AI to your workflows.

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With Zapier and OpenAI’s GPT-3, summarizing your email’s essential details has never been easier. With just a few clicks, you can automatically get a summary for each email in Slack or a handy daily digest that includes all the critical info you need from each email all in one go.

In this article, we’ll walk you through the steps of setting up this powerful Zap—our word for Zapier’s automated workflows. Whether you’re a busy professional or simply seeking to optimize your process, this tutorial will help you streamline your email management and stay on top of your inbox.

Looking for GPT-4? GPT-4 may be available with our OpenAI integration in the future. In the meantime, users with a paid subscription to ChatGPT Plus can access GPT-4 via our ChatGPT integration now—allowing you to add ChatGPT-powered conversations into apps like Slack.

How it works

For this project, we’ll be using OpenAI’s GPT-3 to summarize our emails, and then we’ll send the summaries to Slack.

If you’d like to start with a template, click on the Zap template below to go to the Zap editor. You’ll need to create a Zapier account if you don’t already have one. Then, follow the directions below to set up your Zap.

Get an OpenAI-generated email summary in Slack for new Gmail emails

Try it

Gmail, Formatter by Zapier, OpenAI (GPT-3, DALL·E, Whisper), Slack

Gmail + Formatter by Zapier + OpenAI (GPT-3, DALL·E, Whisper) + 1 moreMore details

Alternatively, if you prefer to receive the notifications as a daily digest rather than individually, we’ll walk through how you can use Digest by Zapier for this purpose.

If you’d like to go the digest route, you can start with the following Zap template:

Get an AI-generated daily digest of your emails in Slack

Try it

Gmail, Digest by Zapier, Formatter by Zapier, OpenAI (GPT-3, DALL·E, Whisper), Slack

Gmail + Digest by Zapier + Formatter by Zapier + 2 moreMore details

Before we begin developing our Zap, you’ll also need an OpenAI account if you don’t already have one. Go to platform.openai.com to sign up for your account. You’ll also need a free Slack account, which you can sign up for at www.slack.com.

Are you ready to build this yourself? Let’s get started!

New to Zapier? It’s a tool that helps anyone connect apps and automate workflows—without any complicated code. Sign up for free.

Step 1: Set up your Gmail trigger step

Head over to Zapier, and click the Create Zap button to create a new Zap.

Search for and select Gmail for the trigger app and New Email in Gmail for the trigger event (if you’re using the Zap template, these will already be selected for you).

A Zap with Gmail selected for the trigger app and New Email for the trigger event.

Next, connect your Gmail account if you haven’t already connected it to Zapier.

In the Label/Mailbox field, select INBOX. You can optionally leave this blank to trigger for all emails. But since that will also trigger for sent messages and drafts, INBOX is the best choice unless you do heavy email filtering/labeling to remove emails from your inbox.

In the Label/Mailbox field, INBOX is shown selected.

Click Test Trigger, and you should see a recent email from your inbox, as shown below:

A successful test result that shows an email found in a Gmail inbox.

Step 2: Set up a formatter step to truncate your email

Currently, GPT-3 only allows you to send a limited amount of data to summarize, so we’ll need to truncate our email to make sure we don’t exceed this limit. In the future, OpenAI plans to develop new models with higher limits, or possibly no limits, but for now, this is a necessary step.

Click the + symbol beneath your Gmail trigger, then search for and select Formatter by Zapier for the action app and Text for the event.

An action step of a Zap with Formatter by Zapier selected for the action app and Text for the action event.

Select Truncate as your transform action. Click in the Input field, and select Body Plain from the data dropdown from your Gmail trigger—this contains the plain-text body of the email.

In the Max Length field, enter 6000, and then select True for the Append Ellipsis option. Here’s what your complete action step should look like:

A formatter step in the Zap editor with assorted fields filled out.

This 6000-character truncation means that if the email is shorter than 6000 characters, we’ll keep the entire thing, but if it’s longer, we’ll only keep the first 6000. 6000 characters is quite long, but I do often see emails that go over this limit. Most commonly, this will be longer newsletters or long back-and-forth email threads, as Gmail will include the entire thread in the body that Zapier receives. Because Gmail processes their email threads in reverse chronological order, this truncation will keep the most recent emails in the thread.

Next, click Test Action to ensure everything is working properly. Next, we’ll set up our prompt to send to OpenAI.

Step 3: Set up your OpenAI email summary prompt

If you haven’t set up your Zapier connection to OpenAI, you’ll have to do that now. To start, head back over to platform.openai.com to log into your account. At the top right of the page, click on your profile icon and click View API Keys:

The Settings menu in OpenAI with the View API Keys tab selected.

From that page, click on the + Create new secret key button to generate a new API key. You’ll need this key to connect to your OpenAI account within Zapier. Copy this key and store it somewhere safe!

Head back over to Zapier and add a new action step at the bottom of your Zap. Search for the OpenAI app and choose the Send Prompt event:

An action step in the Zap editor with OpenAI selected for the action app and Send Prompt for the action event.

Click on Choose account, and set up a new account by providing the API key you just generated in OpenAI. If you already have set up your account connection, simply select your existing account.

Head to the Set up action section to set up the prompt we’ll be sending over to OpenAI. In the Prompt field, copy and paste the following:

Summarize the following email into 3 sentences max. Make it concise:

"""

<Output from Formatter by Zapier>

"""

Replace the bracketed content with the Output variable from your Formatter by Zapier step by selecting Output from the Insert Data dropdown.

An OpenAI action step in the Zap editor with a prompt added to the Prompt field.

The triple quotes help GPT-3 to understand where the email starts and stops.

If you want, you can give more specific instructions for the summary depending on your use case. For example, if you’re using this for your work email, you might provide information about your role at your company and the type of information that is or isn’t important to you. You might also consider providing additional context about the services or products your company offers so that GPT-3 can incorporate some of those details into the summary. For now, we’ll keep it simple with the prompt I show above.

You can leave all of the other fields for this step set to their default values.

Click Test Action to send the email over to OpenAI. Review the summary and make sure everything looks okay.

If you want to get a notification in Slack for each email you receive, continue to the next step.

If you want to get a daily digest of all of your emails, skip ahead.

Get notifications for each email step 4: Set up your Slack message

Next, we’ll set up the action step that will send the email summary back to you in a Slack message. This could also be set up to send as an email or SMS if you prefer, but we’ll be using Slack for this example.

Add a fourth action step and search for the Slackapp. Select the Send Channel Message event.

A Slack action step in the Zap editor with Send Channel Message selected for the action event.

Connect your Slack account if you haven’t already connected it to Zapier.

Next, we’ll set up the action step. Select the Slack channel you want these messages to be sent to. I created a new channel called email-summaries for this purpose.

In the Message Text field, copy and paste the following, replacing the bracketed content with data from your previous Zap steps, which you can select from the Insert Data dropdown:

*New email summary*

From {Gmail From Name}, {Gmail From Email}

Received {Gmail Date}

Summary: {OpenAI Choices Text}

<{Gmail Message URL}|Go To Email>

Your Message Text field should look like the following image when complete:

The Message Text field of a Slack step in the Zap editor.

This will create a message in Slack that includes the sender name and email address, the date and time the email was received, the summary generated by OpenAI, and a link to open the email directly in Gmail for easy responding.

Switch the Include a link to this Zap? field to No and leave the remaining fields as is.

Next, click Test Action to send the summary message to your Slack channel and make sure everything is working properly. If everything looks good, you’re now ready to use your Zap.

Get a daily digest step 4: Set up your digest entries

If the idea of receiving instant notifications for every email you receive sounds too distracting, the daily digest is an ideal solution for you. Instead of setting up a Slack notification for the fourth step, we can use a built-in Zapier tool called Digest by Zapier to store up the email summaries throughout the day and then release them to us all at once at a designated time.

Add a new action step to the bottom of your Zap. Select Digest by Zapier for your action app and Append Entry and Schedule Digest for your action event.

A Digest by Zapier step in the Zap editor with Append Entry and Schedule Digest selected for the action event.

Navigate to the Action section and give your digest a descriptive title like Daily Email Summaries.

For the Entry field, simply copy and paste the copy below. Then replace the bracketed content with the variables from the prior steps by selecting them from the Insert Data dropdown.

From {Gmail From Name}, {Gmail From Email}

Received {Gmail Date}

Summary: {OpenAI Choices Text}

<{Gmail Message URL}|Go To Email>

For the Frequency field, select Daily, and for the Time of Day field, choose when you’d like to receive the digest. Your completed action step should look like this:

A digest step in the Zap editor with a list of emails summarized in the Body field.

Click Test Action to add an entry to your digest and make sure your action step is set up correctly.

Get a daily digest step 5: Set up the Slack action to release your daily digest

Finally, we’ll set up the action step that will release your daily digest and send all of the email summaries to you in a Slack message. This digest message will automatically send at the Time of Day you specified in the prior action step.

Add an action step and search for the Slackapp. Select the Send Channel Message event.

A Slack step in the Zap editor with Send Channel Message selected for the action event.

Click on the Actionsection. As before, select the channel you want these messages to be sent to. I created a new channel called email-summaries for this purpose.

In the Message Text field, copy and paste the following, replacing the bracketed content with the data received from your previous digest step by selecting them from the insert Data dropdown:

*You received {Digest Count} emails today*

{Current Digest}

Your Message Text field should look like the following image when complete:

A Slack message text field with a daily digest of 4 emails.

This will create a message in Slack that includes the total number of emails received and the digest with all of the email summaries that were created throughout the day, formatted as we specified in the prior step.

Switch the Include a link to this Zap? field to No and leave the remaining fields as is.

Next, click Test Action to send the summary digest to your Slack Channel and make sure everything is working properly. If everything looks right, you’re now ready to use your Zap!

Putting it all together

Whether you’re a busy professional or simply looking to optimize your email management process, setting up either of these workflows can help streamline your day and keep you on top of your inbox. Give it a try and see the difference it can make!

Table of contents

What are the Top Cybersecurity Threats Today?

Benefits of Open-Source CyberSecurity tools

Cost-Effectiveness

Customizability and Flexibility

Rapid Development and Updates

Extensive Support and Collaboration

Improved Security and Transparency

Platform Independence and Interoperability

Top 25 Open Source Cyber Security Monitoring Tools in 2023

1. Wireshark: Network Protocol Analyzer

2. Snort: Network Intrusion Detection and Prevention System

3. OSSEC: Host-Based Intrusion Detection System

4. Security Onion: Intrusion Detection and Network Security Monitoring Distribution

5. Nmap: Network Scanning and Discovery Tool

6. Kismet: Wireless Network Detector, Sniffer, and Intrusion Detection System

7. Suricata: High-Performance Network Intrusion Detection and Prevention Engine

8. Zeek (formerly Bro): Network Analysis Framework for Security Monitoring

9. OpenVAS: Vulnerability Scanning and Management Solution

10. ClamAV: Open-Source Antivirus Engine

11. Fail2Ban: Log-Parsing Application to Protect Against Brute-Force Attacks

12. AlienVault OSSIM: Open-Source Security Information and Event Management Platform

13. Cuckoo Sandbox: Automated Malware Analysis System

14. Logstash: Log Processing and Management Tool

15. pfSense: Open-Source Firewall and Router Distribution

16. ModSecurity: Open-Source Web Application Firewall

17. AIDE (Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment): File and Directory Integrity Checker

18. Graylog: Open-Source Log Management Platform

19. Wazuh: Security Monitoring and Compliance Solution

20. T-Pot: Honeypot Platform

Honorable mentions

Tips to Improve Your Cybersecurity Posture

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Wrapping up

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