A selection of useful IT resources for professionals and businesses.

Networking

Quad 9 – Alternative DNS to your ISP or Google DNS. Provides protective DNS protection against bad sites. Use 9.9.9.9 as your DNS provider.
https://quad9.net/#/

MX Toolbox – Need to dig around a domain name; then use MX Toolbox that can provide a wealth of information around domains DNS configuration. It can also process raw email headers to tell you how an email was delivered to you.
https://mxtoolbox.com/

DNS Stuff – Now owned by SolarWinds, DNS Stuff also has a large range of tools for checking out DNS, IP addresses and domain names.
https://tools.dnsstuff.com/

DNS Checker – If you’re making DNS changes to systems used over the internet and want to see the progress. This site gives you a good indication of the DNS changes and progress throughout the internet.
https://dnschecker.org/

DNS Benchmark – Download and find out what DNS servers are best for your network.
https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm

IP Calculator – Lots of them our there, but this is prefered site of choice.
http://jodies.de/ipcalc

Communication

Signal – messages, and calls are always end-to-end encrypted and painstakingly engineered to keep your communication safe.
https://signal.org/download/

Security

Haystacks – How complex is your password? How long would it take to brute force?
https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm

IP Leak – This is the kind of information that all the sites you visit, as well as their advertisers and any embedded widget, can see and collect about you.
https://ipleak.net

Monitor – From Firefox, this free service monitors your email addresses to check if they’ve been breached, hacked.
https://monitor.firefox.com/

VirusTotal – Upload suspect files and have it scanned by 70 antivirus vendors.
https://www.virustotal.com

FishTank & Webroot – Is this a bad website or link?
https://www.phishtank.com
https://www.brightcloud.com/tools/url-ip-lookup.php

Complex Password Generator
https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm

Scottish Password Generator – Nessie Pass!
https://nessiepass.com/

Shodan – The Search engine for security
https://www.shodan.io/

Tools

Waky Now – Remote control software
https://wayk.devolutions.net/home/download

GRC – Gibson Research Corporation (Security Now Podcast) has shed load of free applications you can down.
https://www.grc.com/freepopular.htm

Easy2Boot – Want to boot almost ANYTHING from just one single USB drive
https://www.easy2boot.com

Ventoy – A New Bootable USB Solution
https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html

Apple Mac

OnyX – Maintenance tool
https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html

Software

Active @ Boot Disk – Help with fixing boot problems
https://www.boot-disk.com

Ninite – Quickly install multiple free applications from a couple of clicks and one download.
https://ninite.com/

Snappy Driver installer – Missing drivers
https://sdi-tool.org/

Hardware

BiOSBUG – Lost Bios password?
https://www.biosbug.com

RAID Calculator – From Synology but useful quickly working out server specs and configurations
https://www.synology.com/en-uk/support/RAID_calculator

BurnInTest – Test hardware
https://www.passmark.com/products/burnintest

CPU Benchmark – I have no idea what the numbers mean, and that doesn’t matter! Useful for comparing your old CPU againist potential upgrades.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/

TechPower Up – Lookup Video Card Specs
https://www.techpowerup.com

Internet

SamKnows – UK Broadband Checker
https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker

BT Broadband – Detailed information on local UK exchanges for Broadband
https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL