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“While it’s not always the sexiest side of security, patch management is one of the most critical aspects of an organization’s overall security program. Unfortunately, despite vendors working diligently to combat vulnerabilities with patches and enterprises incorporating them, those efforts are often in vain because the end user doesn’t apply them. These days, leaving patch [...]

With just a month left for nominations, BigFix is adding a new prize to the 2009 System Administrator of the Year contest – a progressive jackpot up to $5,000. The prize will start at $2,000, with $200 added to the pot for every 10 new nominations. The final prize will be split between the winning sysadmin and [...]

Until I read this, it never occurred to me that oceanographic vessels would have sysadmins, but now I know better. A truly fascinating entry from the log book of a marine sys admin. My SysAdmin is a Rock Star because…: He takes on everything.  Out where this sysadmin rocks, the boundaries of responsibility blur— where [...]

This entry is short but gets right to the point. This Sysadmin of the Year nominee has saved his organization big bucks. That gets attention in any phase of an economic cycle. Names changed to keep the awesome out of the hands of headhunters. My SysAdmin is a Rock Star because…: [Julien Sorel] virtually single [...]

After a few tentative drips, it’s pouring Sysadmin of the Year entries. The following describes the indoor adventures of “Nathaniel ‘Natty’ Bumppo,” exorcist of entropy. No one is really named Natty Bumppo. Hollywood even changed the name for the 1985 “Last of the Mohicans,” a great disappointment to sticklers for literary accuracy. But we digress. [...]

“Attorneys at their worst”? The kind with scaly skins, cold blooded metabolic systems, and phobic to daylight?  (Entry redacted to maintain contest objectivity and not to embarrass anyone except lawyers.) [Hans Castorp] deals with the worst of lawyers, who range from the computer-savvy to those who are completely technically-clueless, and with their legal assistants, all [...]

Without prejudging the competition in any way, the following stands out as a very strong Sysadmin of the Year nomination. Hans Delbruck is not the nominee’s real name, of course, and we invite readers to send their guesses on why we used it as an alias for this philanthropist and saint among sysadmins. My SysaAn [...]

In response to audience requests for “More! More!” we’ve just added the “Take it to 11” blog space to the Sysadmin of the Year website. While the SAOTY competition is a sincere celebration of sysadminhood, we thought it would be fun to set up a virtual playground for the Keith Moon fans out there to [...]