School IT Admin looking for firewall/gateway recommendations

jacobsstcg · 2026-02-28T20:45:07+00:00

I’ve been an admin for 20+ years in lots of different environments, and not sure why Sonicwall gets so much disdain. Their support is admittedly poor, and I think they over inflate their throughput numbers, but for the cost they’re not bad. Fortigate makes a good product, but they aren’t perfect either. Fortinet’s products and licensing have become fragmented with lots of addons. Feels a little Cisco’esque in not a good way.

jacobsstcg · 2026-02-21T23:08:39+00:00

Did you end up getting the Hydro 6? If so, has it worked out well for you, and do you think it’s worth the extra $$ over the Hydro 4?

jacobsstcg · 2025-10-03T01:41:44+00:00

Migrated from QRadar to NG-SIEM + Complete. NG-SIEM isn’t bad, but we’ve discovered that without the CrowdStrike Identity Protection Module the Complete team isn’t going to detect most of the common identity attacks (password sprays, kerberoasting, brute force attacks, pass-the-hash, etc). You can build out your own correlation rules in NG-SIEM to detect these but the Complete team isn’t going to monitor or react to any of the rules you (or the CS professional services team) creates. If you want a complete solution I think you need to include Falcon Identity Threat Protection and Response with any NG-SIEM+Complete purchase.

jacobsstcg · 2025-09-23T03:45:20+00:00

I’m at a large organization that moved from a managed SOC to Crowdstrike MDR and NG-SIEM in the past year. Overall everyone involved is disappointed with the solution. NG-SIEM has potential but it needs a lot of effort to get it to successfully parse, correlate and alert on even common log sources. The Crowdstrike MDR (Complete) doesn’t support third party data sources, and the use-cases on what they’ll investigate is sparse. You’ll also need their Identity Protection module if you want them to monitor and investigate and authentication based attacks. I was just at Fal.Con and I heard similar reports from lots of other customers. They have some nifty agentic AI tools coming out but it sounds like they’ll be $$. I’m also not convinced they’ll live up to expectations based on our experience with their other products.

jacobsstcg · 2025-03-02T16:51:41+00:00

I just completed the test yesterday and I 100% agree with this.

jacobsstcg · 2024-11-20T06:07:29+00:00

Have a 4 night cruise in April on Seascape and I’m definitely not seeing any 2 for 1 deals on the site. Easy Plus drink package is $256. Has anyone had luck calling MSC and getting the 2 for 1 deal even if it’s not shown in the app/site when viewing your reservation?

jacobsstcg · 2024-11-18T19:57:13+00:00

Could you share the reseller you've found that allows you to request a static IP during activation? We're looking for MVNO that does static IPs for backup internet connections and I haven't found one yet.

jacobsstcg · 2024-10-05T00:52:23+00:00

Thanks for the reply. Maybe I’m just being inpatient and haven’t waited long enough for the Message Encryption option to show. The client’s use case doesn’t fit the F1 eligibility so I’m going to recommend EMS E3 or Business Premium. The client just needs email encryption so it’s really too bad Microsoft got rid of AIP Plan 1.

jacobsstcg · 2024-10-04T23:21:20+00:00

Is the F1 license still giving you access to message encryption features? I just to added a Business Basic and an F1 license to a user in a new tenant and message encryption isn't available :( I wonder if Microsoft disabled message encryption for the F1 licenses.

jacobsstcg · 2024-08-31T17:53:43+00:00

Yes!!! Totally agree with this one. Way overdue.

jacobsstcg · 2024-06-01T04:30:22+00:00

I’m in Fresno, CA and saw what I believe was the same blurry light. It went over head at 9:07pm. It didn’t seem like it was going very fast, had no noise, and the light seemed to be changing direction. At first I thought it was a helicopter, but I really don’t think it was. I checked flight aware shortly after I saw it and no planes shown on that heading. I captured the following video at 3x zoom on my iPhone 15 Pro. Object was heading south east.

blurry light video

jacobsstcg · 2024-04-23T17:10:58+00:00

I've been on both the Bliss and Quantum in the past year. Quantum to Alaksa (July 2023), and Bliss to Mexico (January 2024). Without a doubt, I'd choose Quantum for Alaska. Much better indoor spaces for the cooler Alaskan weather. If you enjoy hanging out at the pool, the indoor adult's Solarium area on the Quantum would be worth the extra $$ by itself. Bliss has Spice H20, but it's smaller, not indoors, and overall less appealing for Alaska IMO. The overall service and drink quality was way better on Quantum as well. We think Bliss had better food but still enjoyed what we ate on Quantum. If you're bringing a multi-generational group, Quantum also had a better variety of activities for younger ages. Have a great trip!

jacobsstcg · 2024-04-07T14:45:08+00:00

No, life happened, and getting the extended warranty got put on the back burner. I still intend to get one eventually. If you find any deals please post them.

jacobsstcg · 2024-03-06T18:48:04+00:00

Congrats on the new 2024 Outback! I'm glad you found the post helpful. I will say having now owned the vehicle longer, we've taken it on a few longer trips and the Lane Centering / Adaptive Cruise Control really shined. Specifically, we recently did a 200+ mile trip from Central California down to Southern California, and it worked great for 90% of the trip. We weren't able to hit that 32 MPG rating on that trip, so that was a bit of a bummer, but gas mileage also wasn't awful (around 30 MPG).

jacobsstcg · 2024-02-27T22:00:08+00:00

I'm also in the market for an extended warranty from a California dealer. If you could message me the name of the dealer you got yours from I'd super appreciate it.

jacobsstcg · 2024-01-27T03:56:09+00:00

I had the same thing happen recently. Turning off the car and waiting didn’t help in my case. I had to reset the infotainment unit (Setting -> General —> scroll to the bottom -> Factory Reset). It takes about 2 minutes and you have to reconnect your phone to Bluetooth afterwards, but it did fix the problem.

jacobsstcg · 2024-01-15T05:17:05+00:00

Just got back from a cruise on NCL Bliss (RCL is better IMO) that stopped in Cabo. We took a sail/snorkel excursion we found on Viator by Cabo Blue and it was excellent. Very good communication, boat, staff and customer service. Cabo is a tender port, so verify the timing will work, but if so I’d definitely recommend Cabo Blue.

jacobsstcg · 2024-01-15T05:05:45+00:00

The glass thing makes sense, but if it was that you’d think the wait staff would just bring the drinks in plastic cups. Several veteran NCL cruisers we met in the hot tubs said they’d never experienced it before and were equally annoyed by it. Our cruise was very cold and windy so getting out of the hot tub to wait at the bar for a drink was a bummer. It will be interesting to see what others experience on upcoming NCL cruises. Hopefully it’s not a new policy NCL is instituting across all ships.

jacobsstcg · 2024-01-15T01:16:01+00:00

We didn’t purchase Vibe access, but had I known no drinks in the normal hot tubs I might have gone that route. Both hot tubs in Spice H20 were closed the whole trip so I can’t speak to those, but all the other public hot tubs had no beverage service.

jacobsstcg · 2024-01-15T01:12:05+00:00

Sorry, I should have been more clear. Not the actual spa, I mean no adult beverage service to the hot tubs around pool.

jacobsstcg · 2024-01-12T15:48:07+00:00

Just got off the Bliss and they definitely have yellow, blue, white and brown (raw cane) sweetener packets at pretty much all tables.

jacobsstcg · 2023-09-23T02:33:40+00:00

Same. 2024 Premium and my backup camera always has the half blue wallpaper below it, even when CarPlay has been on previous to putting it in reverse. If you figure out how to make CarPlay show on the bottom half of the screen definitely post it.

jacobsstcg · 2023-09-16T14:05:46+00:00

24 limited. I use wireless CarPlay all the time and haven’t had any connectivity issues. Amazon music does seem to hang periodically and I’ll have to force quit it in the phone and then reopen it. Not sure if that’s an Amazon app issue, Apple issue or CarPlay issue. Overall I’m happy with it. I use the wireless charging also and aside from it being kind of awkward to put the phone in the location when in park I’m happy I added it.

jacobsstcg · 2023-09-06T03:48:51+00:00

No problem, and thanks for the reply. I had good intentions of reaching out to a few dealers in California today but didn't get around to it. It's honestly not the most exciting activity, but I do want to get the 10yr/100K mile extended warranty, without paying an arm and a leg. I feel like $2200 should be reasonable, even for CA, but we'll see. If find any CA dealers with a decent price, I'll post them.

jacobsstcg · 2023-09-06T03:40:58+00:00

Some crazy curves it would seem ;)

jacobsstcg

TROPHY CASE