In the Windows registry, what does HKCU stand for?

In the Windows registry, what does HKCU stand for?

• HKEY_COMMON_USER
• HKEY_COMMAND_USER
• HKEY_COMPUTER_USER
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER 

EXPLANATION

How to Get to HKEY_CURRENT_USER

HKEY_CURRENT_USER is a registry hive, one of the easier types of things to find in Registry Editor:

1. Open Registry Editor.
2. Locate HKEY_CURRENT_USER in Registry Editor, from the pane on the left.
3. Double-tap or double-click on HKEY_CURRENT_USER, or single click/tap the small arrow or plus icon on the left, if you want to expand it.
   

Newer versions of Windows use an arrow as that button to expand registry hives but others have a plus sign.

Don't See HKEY_CURRENT_USER?

HKEY_CURRENT_USER may be hard to find if Registry Editor has been used on your computer before, since the program takes you directly to the last place you were. Since all computers with Windows Registry have this hive, you aren't actually missing HKEY_CURRENT_USER if you can't see it, but you might need to hide a few things in order to find it.

Here's what to do: From the left-hand side of Registry Editor, scroll to the very top until you see Computer and HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. Select the arrow or plus sign to the left of the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT folder to minimize/collapse that entire hive. The one just below it is HKEY_CURRENT_USER.

Registry Subkeys in HKEY_CURRENT_USER

Here are some common registry keys you might find under the HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive:

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\AppEvents
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Console
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Environment
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\EUDC
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Keyboard Layout
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Network
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Printers
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\System
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Volatile Environment

The registry keys located under the HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive on your computer may differ from the list above. The version of Windows you're running, and the software you have installed, both determine what keys may be present.

Since the HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive is user specific, the keys and values contained in it will differ from user to user even on the same computer. This is unlike most other registry hives which are global, like HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, which retain the same information across all users in Windows.

HKCU Examples

Following is some information on just a few sample keys found under the HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\AppEvents\EventLabels

This is where labels, sounds, and descriptions are found for various functions in Windows and third-party apps, like fax beeps, completed iTunes tasks, low battery alarm, mail beeps, and more.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel

Under \Control Panel\Keyboard is where a few keyboard settings are found, like the keyboard delay and keyboard speed options, both of which are controlled via the Repeat delay and Repeat rate settings in the Keyboard Control Panel applet.

The Mouse applet is another one whose settings are stored in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse key. Some options there include DoubleClickHeight, ExtendedSounds, MouseSensitivity, MouseSpeed, MouseTrails, and SwapMouseButtons.

Yet another Control Panel section is dedicated solely to the mouse cursor, found under Cursors. Stored here is the name and physical file location of default and custom cursors. Windows uses still and animated cursor files that have the CUR and ANI file extensions, respectively, so most of the cursor files found here point to files of those types in the %SystemRoot%\cursors\ folder.

The same is true for the HKCU Control Panel Desktop key that defines lots of Desktop-related settings in values like WallpaperStyle that describes whether to center the wallpaper or stretch it across the display. Others in this same location include CursorBlinkRate, ScreenSaveActive, ScreenSaveTimeOut, and MenuShowDelay.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Environment

The Environment key is where environment variables like PATH and TEMP are found. Changes can be made here or through Windows Explorer, and they'll be reflected in both places.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software

Lots of user-specific software entries are listed in this registry key. One example is the location of the Firefox web browser program. This subkey is where the PathToExe value is found that explains where firefox.exe is located within the installation folder:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mozilla\Mozilla Firefox\57.0 (x64 en-US)\Main

More on HKEY_CURRENT_USER

The HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive is actually just a pointer to the key located under the HKEY_USERS hive that's named the same as your security identifier. You can make changes in either location since they are one and the same.

The reason HKEY_CURRENT_USER even exists, given that it's just a reference point to another hive, is that it provides an easier way to view the information. The alternative is to find the security identifier of your account and navigate to that area of HKEY_USERS.

Again, everything seen in HKEY_CURRENT_USER pertains only to the user that's currently logged on, not any of the other users that exist on the computer. This means that each user that logs in will pull their own information from the corresponding HKEY_USERS hive, which in turn means HKEY_CURRENT_USER will be different for each user that views it.

Because of how this is set up, you could actually just navigate to a different user's security identifier in HKEY_USERS to see everything they would see in HKEY_CURRENT_USER when they're logged in.

 

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When it comes to cloud computing, which of the following presents a single point of failure?

When it comes to cloud computing, which of the following presents a single point of failure?

• Cloud backup
• Network connection
• Hard disk
• Virtual server 

EXPLANATION

 Most of the cloud outages are caused by Network Connection bad internet or DDOS attack.

Example Networking issues take down Google Cloud in parts of the U.S

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Which of the following is a reason to migrate an application to the cloud?

Which of the following is a reason to migrate an application to the cloud?

• It will always be cheaper than hosting it in-house
• Data encryption
• Elasticity
• High availability 

EXPLANATION

In cloud computing, elasticity is defined as "the degree to which a system is able to adapt to workload changes by provisioning and de-provisioning resources in an autonomic manner, such that at each point in time the available resources match the current demand as closely as possible
 
There are many problems that moving to the cloud can solve. Here are some typical scenarios that will benefit from cloud migration.

• • Your application is experiencing increased traffic and it’s becoming difficult to scale resources on the fly to meet the increasing demand.
  • You need to reduce operational costs while increasing the effectiveness of IT processes.
  • Your clients require fast application implementation and deployment and thus want to focus more on development while reducing infrastructure overhead.
  • Your clients want to expand their business geographically, but you suspect that setting up a multi-region infrastructure – with all the associated maintenance, time, human, and error control effort – is going to be a challenge.
  • It’s becoming more difficult and expensive to keep up with your growing storage needs.
  • You’d like to build a widely distributed development team. Cloud computing environments allow remotely located employees to access applications and work via the Internet.
  • You need to establish a disaster recovery system but setting it up for an entire data center could double the cost. It would also require a complex disaster recovery plan. Cloud disaster recovery systems can be implemented much more quickly and give you much better control over your resources.
  • Tracking and upgrading underlying server software is a time consuming, yet an essential process that requires periodic and sometimes immediate upgrades. In some cases, a cloud provider will take care of this automatically. Some cloud computing models similarly handle many administration tasks such as database backup, software upgrades, and periodic maintenance.
  • Capex to Opex: Cloud computing shifts IT expenditure to a pay-as-you-go model, which is an attractive benefit, especially for startups.

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Why might a government agency be against storing its data in the cloud?

Why might a government agency be against storing its data in the cloud?

• Data in virtual servers is unreliable
• Clouds do not offer data encryption
• Cloud data cannot be backed up
• Data must be stored within national boundaries 

EXPLANATION

Disadvantages of cloud computing explained

1). Downtime

Downtime is often cited as one of the biggest disadvantages of cloud computing. Since cloud computing systems are internet-based, service outages are always an unfortunate possibility and can occur for any reason.
Can your business afford the impacts of an outage or slowdown? An outage on Amazon Web Services in 2017 cost publicly traded companies up to $150 million dollars. Unfortunately, no organization is immune, especially when critical business processes cannot afford to be interrupted. In June and July of 2019, a whole slew of companies and services were hit by outages, including Cloudflare (a major web services provider), Google, Amazon, Shopify, Reddit, Verizon, and Spectrum.

Best practices for minimizing planned downtime in a cloud environment

• Design services with high availability and disaster recovery in mind. Leverage the multi-availability zones provided by cloud vendors in your infrastructure.
• If your services have a low tolerance for failure, consider multi-region deployments with automated failover to ensure the best business continuity possible.
• Define and implement a disaster recovery plan in line with your business objectives that provide the lowest possible recovery time (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO).
• Consider implementing dedicated connectivity such as AWS Direct Connect, Azure ExpressRoute, or Google Cloud’s Dedicated Interconnect or Partner Interconnect. These services provide a dedicated network connection between you and the cloud service point of presence. This can reduce exposure to the risk of business interruption from the public internet.
• Read the fine print on your Service Level Agreement (SLA). Are you guaranteed 99.9% uptime or even better? That 0.1% downtime equals about 45 minutes per month or around eight hours per year.

2). Security and privacy

Although cloud service providers implement the best security standards and industry certifications, storing data and important files on external service providers always opens up risks. Any discussion involving data must address security and privacy, especially when it comes to managing sensitive data. We must not forget what happened at Code Space and the hacking of their AWS EC2 console, which led to data deletion and the eventual shutdown of the company. Their dependence on remote cloud-based infrastructure meant taking on the risks of outsourcing everything.
Of course, any cloud service provider is expected to manage and safeguard the underlying hardware infrastructure of a deployment. However, your responsibilities lie in the realm of user access management, and it’s up to you to carefully weigh all the risk scenarios.
Though recent breaches of credit card data and user login credentials are still fresh in the minds of the public, steps have been taken to ensure the safety of data. One such example is the General Data Protection Rule (GDPR), which was recently enacted in the European Union to provide users more control over their data. Nonetheless, you still need to be aware of your responsibilities and follow best practices.

Best practices for minimizing security and privacy risks

• This is important: Understand the shared responsibility model of your cloud provider. You will still be liable for what occurs within your network and in your product.
• Implement security at every level of your deployment.
• Know who is supposed to have access to each resource and service, and limit access to least privilege. If an employee goes rogue and gains access to your deployment, you would want their impact to be over the smallest area as possible.
• Make sure your team’s skills are up to the task. The Top 10 Things Cybersecurity Professionals Need to Know is a great article to understand how to mitigate security and privacy concerns in the cloud.
• Take a risk-based approach to securing assets used in the cloud and extend security to the devices.
• Implement multi-factor authentication for all accounts accessing sensitive data or systems.
• Encryption, encryption, encryption. Turn on encryption wherever you can — easy wins are on object storage such as Amazon S3 or Azure Blob Storage where customer data often resides. The simple act of turning on encryption on S3 could have prevented the Capital One data breach in July 2019 that exposed 100 million users’ information.

3). Vulnerability to attack

In cloud computing, every component is online, which exposes potential vulnerabilities. Even the best teams suffer severe attacks and security breaches from time to time. Since cloud computing is built as a public service, it’s easy to run before you learn to walk. After all, no one at a cloud vendor checks your administration skills before granting you an account: all it takes to get started is generally a valid credit card.

Best practices to help you reduce cloud attacks

• Make security a core aspect of all IT operations.
• Keep ALL your teams up-to-date with cloud security best practices.
• Ensure security policies and procedures are regularly checked and reviewed.
• Proactively classify information and apply access control.
• Use cloud services such as AWS Inspector, AWS CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail, and AWS Config to automate compliance controls.
• Prevent data exfiltration.
• Integrate prevention and response strategies into security operations.
• Discover rogue projects with audits.
• Remove password access from accounts that do not need to log in to services.
• Review and rotate access keys and credentials.
• Follow security blogs and announcements to be aware of known attacks.
• Apply security best practices for any open source software that you are using.
• Again, use encryption whenever and wherever possible. 

These practices will help your organization monitor for the exposure and movement of critical data, defend crucial systems from attack and compromise, and authenticate access to infrastructure and data to protect against further risks.

4). Limited control and flexibility

Since the cloud infrastructure is entirely owned, managed, and monitored by the service provider, it transfers minimal control over to the customer.
To varying degrees (depending on the particular service), cloud users may find they have less control over the function and execution of services within a cloud-hosted infrastructure. A cloud provider’s end-user license agreement (EULA) and management policies might impose limits on what customers can do with their deployments. Customers retain control of their applications, data, and services, but may not have the same level of control over their backend infrastructure.

Best practices for maintaining control and flexibility

• Consider using a cloud provider partner to help with implementing, running, and supporting cloud services.
• Understand your responsibilities and the responsibilities of the cloud vendor in the shared responsibility model to reduce the chance of omission or error.
• Make time to understand your cloud service provider’s basic level of support. Will this service level meet your support requirements? Most cloud providers offer additional support tiers over and above the basic support for an additional cost.
• Make sure you understand the SLA concerning the infrastructure and services you’re going to use and how that will impact your agreements with your customers.

5). Vendor lock-in

Vendor lock-in is another perceived disadvantage of cloud computing. Easy switching between cloud services is a service that hasn’t yet completely evolved, and organizations may find it difficult to migrate their services from one vendor to another. Differences between vendor platforms may create difficulties in migrating from one cloud platform to another, which could equate to additional costs and configuration complexities. Gaps or compromises made during migration could also expose your data to additional security and privacy vulnerabilities.

Best practices to decrease dependency

• Design with cloud architecture best practices in mind. All cloud services provide the opportunity to improve availability and performance, decouple layers, and reduce performance bottlenecks. If you have built your services using cloud architecture best practices, you are less likely to have issues porting from one cloud platform to another.
• Properly understand what your vendors are selling to help avoid lock-in challenges.
• Employ a multi-cloud strategy to avoid vendor lock-in. While this may add both development and operational complexity to your deployments, it doesn’t have to be a deal breaker. Training can help prepare teams to architect and select best-fit services and technologies.
• Build in flexibility as a matter of strategy when designing applications to ensure portability now and in the future.
• Build your applications with services that offer cloud-first advantages, such as modularity and portability of microservices and code. Think containers and Kubernetes.

6). Cost concerns

Adopting cloud solutions on a small scale and for short-term projects can be perceived as being expensive. However, the most significant cloud computing benefit is in terms of IT cost savings. Pay-as-you-go cloud services can provide more flexibility and lower hardware costs, but the overall price tag could end up being higher than you expected. Until you are sure of what will work best for you, it’s a good idea to experiment with a variety of offerings. You might also make use of the cost calculators made available by providers like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform.

Best practices to reduce costs

• Try not to over provision your services, but rather look into using auto-scaling services.
• Ensure you have the option to scale DOWN as well as UP.
• Pre-pay and take advantage of reserved instances if you have a known minimum usage.
• Automate the process to start/stop your instances to save money when they are not being used.
• Create alerts to track cloud spending.

Disadvantages of cloud computing: Closing thoughts

Many organizations benefit from the agility, scale, and pay-per-use billing that cloud services offer. However, as with any infrastructure service, the suitability of cloud computing for your specific use case should be assessed in a risk-based evaluation. Build in time for research and planning to understand how the cloud will affect your business.

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What does DHCP stand for ?

What does DHCP stand for ?

• Distribution Hosting Configuration Parameter
• Dimension Hack Conflagration Process
• Disillusioned Host Continuation Protocol
• Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol 

EXPLANATION

DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) is a protocol used to provide quick, automatic, and central management for the distribution of IP addresses within a network.

DHCP is also used to configure the proper subnet mask, default gateway, and DNS server information on the device.

 

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What does NTFS stand for?

What does NTFS stand for?

• Not Tested File System
• New Technology File System
• Network Transfer File System
• New Tracking File System 

EXPLANATION

NTFS is a file system developed by Microsoft. NTFS stands for New Technology File System. A file system is a way of storing computer files. Microsoft introduced it with the Windows NT operating system.

It was made to replace the old file-system used by earlier versions of Windows, like Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows 98SE. That file system was also used by MS-DOS and is called FAT.
A newer version of NTFS (v3.1) was used in Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and the most recent version of operating system, Windows 10. NTFS can be accessed from non-Windows operating systems such as Linux using the NTFS-3G driver.

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What type of cloud service is cloud backup storage?

What type of cloud service is cloud backup storage?

• SaaS
• DaaS
• PaaS
• IaaS 

 

EXPLANATION

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)
This service is one of the most common services in the world. It includes providing the customer with rental computer resources in the form of a virtual infrastructure. Servers can include storage systems, virtual switches, and routers. This IT infrastructure is a complete copy of the physical environment.
Cloud-to-cloud backup, or C2C backup, is the practice of copying data stored on one cloud backup service, commonly referred to as software as a service (SaaS), to another cloud. Third-party cloud backup has gained popularity with businesses and home users because it takes the management and maintenance of hardware out of the equation for the customer. Initial capital expenditures (Capex) for additional hardware are not required, and overall initial costs are lower. Backups can be run automatically and without manual intervention

PaaS (Platform as a Service)
This service is also one of the main services. Consists of the fact that the customer receives a full-fledged virtual platform with various tools and services. The customer can customize such a platform according to his needs by making a software testing platform other than this, or by making a system for automating the control system, for example. This type of service is especially popular with software developers.
SaaS (Software as a Service)
It uses almost all people who have access to the Internet because the cloud service is currently considered the most common in the world. Such a service will result in the purchase of any software product on the internet at the customer’s disposal. An example is a Gmail mail service or a cloud version of 1C for example.
CaaS (Communication as a Service)
This service is to provide customers with various communication tools in the cloud. This can be telephone, services for the transfer of fast messages, or the organization of the video. In this case, all required software is available in the cloud provider.
CaaS (Service Container)
This service allows customers to work with containers using the cloud provider API or a custom web panel.
DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service)
This service allows you to create disaster-resistant solutions using the cloud provider. The platform of the cloud service provider is also an platform alternative platform in which data on the customer’s main site is constantly replicated. When the client services fail, they start again in a few minutes. Such solutions are particularly suitable for companies with a large number of critical applications.
BaaS (Backup as Service)
This type of service ensures that customer data is backed up to the cloud of the provider. The cloud service provider not only provides a place to store backups to the customer, but also provides tools to provide fast and reliable backups. For the proper implementation of this service, the planning phase is important, with the parameters and depth of the archive and the capacity of the data transmission channels to be calculated.
BaaS (Back End as Service)
This cloud service provides the customer with a complete software development environment in the provider cloud. This model includes ready-made infrastructure functions and solutions that greatly simplify the work of software developers.
DBaaS (Database as a Service)
This cloud service is able to connect to databases in the cloud. The customer pays rent, depending on the number of users and the size of the base. It is worth noting that such a database will never fall because there is no free disk space.
MaaS (Monitoring as Service)
Such cloud services help organize the monitoring of IT infrastructure using the tools in the provider’s cloud. This is particularly important for companies whose infrastructure is geographically dispersed. This service enables you to centrally monitor all systems that have a single entry point.
DaaS (Desktop as a Service)
This service is to provide users with remote desktops. With this service, you can pay quickly and with minimum cost to organize a new office with a central workplace management. Also, one of the advantages of this service is the ability to work from any device that is particularly valuable to employees for business trips and enduring trips.
STaaS (Storage as a Service)
This service is to provide disk space in the cloud provider. At the same time for users this area will be a normal network folder or local disk. The power of this solution lies in advanced data security, as reliable storage systems operate in the cloud of the provider.
NaaS (Network as a Service)
This service allows you to organize a full-fledged, complex network infrastructure in the cloud provider. This service includes the use of routing tools, security organization, and various network protocols.
All of these cloud services are important for customers to remove certain tasks related to the organization of specific solutions from their shoulders and allow them to focus on their work. And, of course, given the intense use of these services, providers ensure the high speed and reliability of the services provided by using the most advanced technologies in their applications. The use of solutions at this level in a client’s local infrastructure is often unprofitable. Thus, cloud services help ordinary companies use tools at the enterprise level.

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