Bring together the Python programming language and Microsoft’s PowerShell to address digital investigations and create state-of-the-art solutions for administrators, IT personnel, cyber response teams, and forensic investigators. You will learn how to join PowerShell's robust set of commands and access to the internals of both the MS Windows desktop and enterprise devices and Python's rich scripting environment allowing for the rapid development of new tools for investigation, automation, and deep analysis. PowerShell and Python Together takes a practical approach that provides an entry point and level playing field for a wide range of individuals, small companies, researchers, academics, students, and hobbyists to participate. What You’ll Learn Leverage the internals of PowerShell for: digital investigation, incident response, and forensics Leverage Python to exploit already existing PowerShell CmdLets and aliases to build new automation and analysis capabilities Create combined PowerShell and Python applications that provide: rapid response capabilities to cybersecurity events, assistance in the precipitous collection of critical evidence (from the desktop and enterprise), and the ability to analyze, reason about, and respond to events and evidence collected across the enterprise Who This Book Is For System administrators, IT personnel, incident response teams, forensic investigators, professors teaching in undergraduate and graduate programs in cybersecurity, students in cybersecurity and computer science programs, and software developers and engineers developing new cybersecurity defenses

Automate complex tasks and processes with PowerShell scripts. This amazing book teaches you how to write, test, and organize high-quality, reusable scripts for Windows, Linux, and cloud-based systems. Learn PowerShell Scripting in a Month of Lunches, Second Edition takes you beyond command-line PowerShell and opens up the amazing world of scripting and automation. In just 27 bite-sized lessons, you’ll learn to write scripts that can eliminate repetitive manual tasks, create custom reusable tools, and build effective pipelines and workflows. In Learn PowerShell Scripting in a Month of Lunches, Second Edition you’ll learn: Setting up a reliable scripting environment Designing functions and scripts Effective pipeline usage Scripting and security Dealing with errors and bugs Source control with git Sharing and publishing scripts Professional-grade scripting practices The PowerShell language lets you write scripts to control nearly every aspect of Windows. Just master a few straightforward scripting skills, and you'll save yourself from hours of tedious tasks. This revised second edition is fully updated to PowerShell’s latest version, including hands-on examples that perfectly demonstrate modern PowerShell’s cross-platform applications. About the technology You can write PowerShell scripts to automate nearly any admin task on Windows, Linux, and macOS. This book shows you how! In just 27 short lessons you can complete on your lunch break, you’ll learn to create, organize, test, and share scripts and tools that will save you hours of time in your daily work. About the book Learn PowerShell Scripting in a Month of Lunches, Second Edition is a hands-on introduction to PowerShell automation and toolbuilding. Updated for the latest version of PowerShell, this thoroughly revised bestseller teaches you how to write efficient scripts, find and squash bugs, and organize your tools into libraries. Along the way, you’ll even pick up tips for securing and managing Linux and macOS systems. What's inside Setting up a reliable scripting environment Designing functions and scripts Effective pipeline usage Sharing and publishing scripts About the reader Beginning to intermediate knowledge of PowerShell required. About the author James Petty is CEO of PowerShell.org and The DevOps Collective and a Microsoft MVP. Don Jones and Jeffery Hicks are the authors of the first edition of Learn PowerShell Scripting in a Month of Lunches. Table of Contents PART 1 1 Before you begin 2 Setting up your scripting environment 3 WWPD: What would PowerShell do? 4 Review: Parameter binding and the PowerShell pipeline 5 Scripting language: A crash course 6 The many forms of scripting (and which to choose) 7 Scripts and security PART 2 8 Always design first 9 Avoiding bugs: Start with a command 10 Building a basic function and script module 11 Getting started with advanced functions 12 Objects: The best kind of output 13 Using all the streams 14 Simple help: Making a comment 15 Errors and how to deal with them 16 Filling out a manifest PART 3 17 Changing your brain when it comes to scripting 18 Professional-grade scripting 19 An introduction to source control with Git 20 Pestering your script 21 Signing your script 22 Publishing your script PART 4 23 Squashing bugs 24 Enhancing script output presentation 25 Wrapping up the .NET Framework 26 Storing data—not in Excel! 27 Never the end

Learn to use PowerShell, Microsoft's scripting language, to automate real-world tasks that IT professionals and system administrators deal with every day. Save Time. Automate. PowerShell® is both a scripting language and an administrative shell that lets you control and automate nearly every aspect of IT. In PowerShell for Sysadmins, five-time Microsoft® MVP "Adam the Automator" Bertram shows you how to use PowerShell to manage and automate your desktop and server environments so that you can head out for an early lunch. You'll learn how to: Combine commands, control flow, handle errors, write scripts, run scripts remotely, and test scripts with the PowerShell testing framework, Pester Parse structured data like XML and JSON, work with common domains (like Active Directory, Azure, and Amazon Web Services), and create a real-world server inventory script Design and build a PowerShell module to demonstrate PowerShell isn't just about ad-hoc scripts Use PowerShell to create a hands-off, completely automated Windows deployment Build an entire Active Directory forest from nothing but a Hyper-V host and a few ISO files Create endless Web and SQL servers with just a few lines of code! Real-world examples throughout help bridge the gap between theory and actual system, and the author's anecdotes keep things lively. Stop with the expensive software and fancy consultants. Learn how to manage your own environment with PowerShell for Sysadmins and make everyone happy. Covers Windows PowerShell v5.1

Summary PowerShell in Depth, Second Edition is the go-to reference for administrators working with Windows PowerShell. Every major technique, technology, and tactic is carefully explained and demonstrated, providing a hands-on guide to almost everything an admin would do in the shell. Written by three experienced authors and PowerShell MVPs, this is the PowerShell book you'll keep next to your monitor—not on your bookshelf! Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Book A Windows admin using PowerShell every day may not have the time to search the net every time he or she hits a snag. Wouldn't it be great to have a team of seasoned PowerShell experts ready to answer even the toughest questions? That's what you get with this book. PowerShell in Depth, Second Edition is the go-to reference for administrators working with Windows PowerShell. Every major technique, technology, and tactic is carefully explained and demonstrated, providing a hands-on guide to almost everything an admin would do in the shell. Written by PowerShell MVPs Don Jones, Jeffrey Hicks, and Richard Siddaway, each valuable technique was developed and thoroughly tested, so you'll be able to consistently write production-quality, maintainable scripts while saving hours of time and effort. This book assumes you know the basics of PowerShell. What's Inside Automating tasks Packaging and deploying scripts Introduction to Desired State Configuration PowerShell security Covers PowerShell version 3 and later About the Authors Don Jones, Jeffery Hicks, and Richard Siddaway are Microsoft MVPs, trainers, and administrators. Collectively, they've authored nearly three dozen books on PowerShell and Windows administration. Table of Contents PART 1 POWERSHELL FUNDAMENTALS Introduction PowerShell hosts Using the PowerShell help system The basics of PowerShell syntax Working with PSSnapins and modules Operators Working with objects The PowerShell pipeline Formatting PART 2 POWERSHELL MANAGEMENT PowerShell Remoting Background jobs and scheduling Working with credentials Regular expressions Working with HTML and XML data PSDrives and PSProviders Variables, arrays, hash tables, and script blocks PowerShell security Advanced PowerShell syntax PART 3 POWERSHELL SCRIPTING AND AUTOMATION PowerShell's scripting language Basic scripts and functions Creating objects for output Scope PowerShell workflows Advanced syntax for scripts and functions Script modules and manifest modules Custom formatting views Custom type extensions Data language and internationalization Writing help Error handling techniques Debugging tools and techniques Functions that work like cmdlets Tips and tricks for creating reports PART 4 ADVANCED POWERSHELL Working with the Component Object Model (COM) Working with .NET Framework objects Accessing databases Proxy functions Building a GUI WMI and CIM Working with the web Desired State Configuration

Python Forensics provides many never-before-published proven forensic modules, libraries, and solutions that can be used right out of the box. In addition, detailed instruction and documentation provided with the code samples will allow even novice Python programmers to add their own unique twists or use the models presented to build new solutions. Rapid development of new cybercrime investigation tools is an essential ingredient in virtually every case and environment. Whether you are performing post-mortem investigation, executing live triage, extracting evidence from mobile devices or cloud services, or you are collecting and processing evidence from a network, Python forensic implementations can fill in the gaps. Drawing upon years of practical experience and using numerous examples and illustrative code samples, author Chet Hosmer discusses how to: - Develop new forensic solutions independent of large vendor software release schedules - Participate in an open-source workbench that facilitates direct involvement in the design and implementation of new methods that augment or replace existing tools - Advance your career by creating new solutions along with the construction of cutting-edge automation solutions to solve old problems - Provides hands-on tools, code samples, and detailed instruction and documentation that can be put to use immediately - Discusses how to create a Python forensics workbench - Covers effective forensic searching and indexing using Python - Shows how to use Python to examine mobile device operating systems: iOS, Android, and Windows 8 - Presents complete coverage of how to use Python scripts for network investigation

Python is an ideal language for solving problems, especially in Linux and Unix networks. With this pragmatic book, administrators can review various tasks that often occur in the management of these systems, and learn how Python can provide a more efficient and less painful way to handle them. Each chapter in Python for Unix and Linux System Administration presents a particular administrative issue, such as concurrency or data backup, and presents Python solutions through hands-on examples. Once you finish this book, you'll be able to develop your own set of command-line utilities with Python to tackle a wide range of problems. Discover how this language can help you: Read text files and extract information Run tasks concurrently using the threading and forking options Get information from one process to another using network facilities Create clickable GUIs to handle large and complex utilities Monitor large clusters of machines by interacting with SNMP programmatically Master the IPython Interactive Python shell to replace or augment Bash, Korn, or Z-Shell Integrate Cloud Computing into your infrastructure, and learn to write a Google App Engine Application Solve unique data backup challenges with customized scripts Interact with MySQL, SQLite, Oracle, Postgres, Django ORM, and SQLAlchemy With this book, you'll learn how to package and deploy your Python applications and libraries, and write code that runs equally well on multiple Unix platforms. You'll also learn about several Python-related technologies that will make your life much easier.

A guide to using Windows PowerShell to script Windows administrative tasks and control Windows from the command line.