Masking Physical Mailing Addresses for Security and Ease of Use

We should mask physical addresses used for mail, packages, parcels, and shipments. The sender’s knowledge of the receiver’s physical address becomes unnecessary by creating a database that associates a unique ID with each physical address. By implementing this approach, we can safeguard the receiver’s privacy while streamlining processes such as change of address notifications when relocating.

Masking the receiver’s address would also make reconnecting with long-lost contacts easy even if they’ve moved or changed names.

The details of how this DB would be implemented, managed, or maintained are beyond the scope of this article but I can explore them in a later post.

New Organization Checklist

Whenever I join a new organization I run through this checklist to see what improvements there are to be made. Some are easier and quicker wins than others. I like to address the easy wins first to show value early on. I plan on making posts related to each item and linking them here.

AAA TACACS+ / RADIUS
BPDU Guard
Certificate strength
Certificates self-signed / CA-signed
Change Control
Config MGMT / backup / revision control
Correct Bandwidth statements on interfaces
DCIM
DHCP settings / Snooping
Diagrams
DNS / Hostnames
EOL HW / SW
Firmware standard
HA Hardware
HA WAN / Internet connection
IPAM
Jumpboxes
Knowledge Base
Line vty / con / aux
Logging local / remote Syslog
Loopback / MGMT IP / interface
MAC security
Monitoring and alerting
NAC / 802.1x / dot1x
NetFlow / Top Talkers
NTP
Out Of Band MGMT
PW policy
SDWAN
SNMPv3
SSHv2
Stolen BGP ASN
Stolen Public IP space
STP
UTC Time Zone
Vendor Contacts and recurring meetings
VLAN names
VLAN numbers

Network Device Labeling

It can be frustrating trying to locate a device in a DC. Even if you know the section, row, and rack number there may be multiple devices of the same make/model, which is where labels come in handy. Unfortunately, there isn’t a vendor-neutral industry standard place to add a label, the glue may fail causing the label to fall off, etc. For now, I’m going to focus on the label location. I would like to submit an RFC to the IETF because I have not found one as of this writing. The RFC would be an industry standard for hardware vendors to follow when designing new equipment.

The specifications should be based on a 1 U device, which would cover non-rack mounted devices, but also be applied to larger devices. There are 2 key components to identifying a device, hostname (ideally one that resolves in DNS), and IP address. Many organizations also label devices with an “Asset Tag” which provides details on purchase and depreciation. The location and size of these should also be standardized.

There should also be a location on both the front and back because depending on the device, and the job, determines which side you work on.

Additionally, room for a QR code that can provide more details could be handy.

New TLD and Restoration

I lost TheLordOfThePings.com due to not expiration of the domain and the card set for autopayment. So now I’m using TheLordOfThePings.net which is more fitting for the blog. In addition to the new TLD I had some issues with my main domain so I had to restore the blog by moving Tables between DB’s.I lost TheLordOfThePings.com due to not expiration of the domain and the card set for autopayment. So now I’m using TheLordOfThePings.net which is more fitting for the blog.

Blog List

Router Gods

Daniel Dib CCIE #37149 CCDE #20160011 – Lost In Transit

Dmitry Figol CCIE RS #53592 –  Blog

Dustin Beare – Network Introvert

Joel Sprague CCIE #52000 – Blog

Joshua Burget – Barefoot Labbing

Katherine McNamara CCIE #50931 – Network Node

Nick Russo CCIE #42518 CCDE #20160041 – njrusmc

Mary Fasang – Networking Green Girl

Russ White – Rule 11

Steinn Örvar CCIE #60715 – Network MEME shirts

Steve McNutt – Dense Mode

Tim McConnaughy CCIE R/S #58615 – Carpe DMVPN

Individual Blogs

Anthony Sequeira – AJ’s Networking

Kevin Wallace – KW Train

Group Blogs

Hack A Day

Packet6

Hak5

Life Hacker

Inactive (No posts in 6+ months)

Router Gods

Chris Pratt – CMP Networking

Kim Pedersen and Daniel Dib CCIE #37149 CCDE #20160011 – Network Career

Individual

Jeremy Stretch CCIE – Packet Life

Group

None

Hello World!

After years of reading other peoples tech blogs i’ve decided to start my own. I’ve delayed doing this because “someone has already written about all the things”. But as Albert Einstein said “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.”

 

My planned topics are:

  • Networking/Security mostly focused on infrastructure (route, switch, wifi, FW, DNS, DHCP, NTP) with some server/app sprinkled in.
  • General tech.
  • Projects I’m working on/have worked on/hope to work on.
  • Troubleshooting experiences.
  • Certification studies. CCNP Routing and Switching is my next target.
  • Lists of sites, tools, articles, books, lists, links, videos, blogs, etc.

 

I don’t have a posting schedule but I hope to post something monthly.