PDQ

06/02/2026

Canvas paid the ransom.

And yeah, everyone hates that sentence.

Security people hate it because paying attackers keeps the business model alive. Legal hates it because nothing about ransom negotiations is clean. IT hates it because it turns one awful incident into a precedent.

But when you’re staring at stolen student data, disrupted classes, panicked schools, and a threat actor promising to dump the goods?

The “never pay” stance gets a lot harder to say with a straight face.

That’s why prevention matters so much. Patching. MFA. Offline backups. Endpoint visibility. Not glamorous. But neither is explaining to parents why the homework portal is now a bitcoin checkout page.

We broke down how to protect your school from a cyberattack here: https://hubs.ly/Q04jK02x0

06/01/2026

PowerShell clicks when you stop treating the pipeline like text flying across the screen and start seeing the objects moving through it.

Frank Lesniak joins Andrew Pla to talk about the weird, frustrating, eventually rewarding parts of learning PowerShell — pipeline confusion, Get-Member lightbulb moments, coming from VBScript, and why the object model can feel so disorienting at first.

He also comes back with some big news: He’s now a Microsoft MVP.

But the episode isn’t just about PowerShell mechanics or career milestones. It’s about what happens when you keep showing up.

Speaking at conferences before you feel polished. Getting involved in user groups. Publishing tools. Contributing on GitHub. Mentoring the next person who quietly assumes everyone else has it figured out.

That stuff adds up.

Come for the PowerShell pipeline therapy. Stay for the reminder that most careers are built in the messy middle, not after you feel ready.

Frank Lesniak joins Andrew Pla for a wide-ranging conversation that covers Frank's newly minted Microsoft MVP status, his journey through PowerShell, and what i...

05/28/2026

The funniest part of SaaS sprawl is how often we try to solve it with more SaaS.

Too many unused licenses? Buy a license management tool.

Too many renewals? Buy a renewal tracking tool.

Too many tools? Buy a tool to discover the tools.

Now the stack is “more organized,” technically, but also bigger ... Which is how you end up playing cat and mouse with your own procurement history.

To be clear, license management is worth doing. Wasted seats are real money.

But visibility doesn’t equal control. A dashboard can show you the mess; it can’t decide who owns it.

That part still needs a human with enough context, authority, and mild stubbornness to say, “We’re done paying for this.”

Learn more about SaaS sprawl:
https://hubs.ly/Q04j32rJ0

05/27/2026

The PDQ team is excited to join the MSPs and vendors at ASCII Edge in Seattle on 5/26 and 5/27. We'll be on hand both days to meet new friends and answer questions about patch management best practices and how MSPs can do more with less!

05/26/2026

Back from a long weekend and already staring at the same problem in a slightly different hat?

Seems about right.

In this episode of The PowerShell Podcast, Andrew Pla sits down with Mark Littlefield, VP of Product at PDQ, to talk about solving problems at the root — whether you’re writing PowerShell, building a product, or trying to understand why that one “temporary fix” has been temporary since 2019.

They get into Mark’s path from tech support to product leadership, what pulled him into the sysadmin world, what surprised him about PowerShell, and how customer conversations helped shape PDQ Connect’s PowerShell Scanner.

They also talk about storytelling, which comes in handy when you have to explain a technical problem to five different teams and somehow make all of them care.

If your week started with a ticket you swear you’ve closed before, this one’s worth a listen:

In this episode, host Andrew Pla sits down with Mark Littlefield, VP of Product at PDQ, for a wide-ranging conversation about product management, the PowerShell...

05/21/2026

Good news: You can organize your packages into folders now.

Bad news: You are still responsible for not naming those folders things like “Stuff,” “Other Stuff,” and “Stuff 2.”

Package folders in PDQ Connect help you keep your packages organized, which makes it easier to find what you need, manage related deployments, and avoid the classic sysadmin guessing game of “which one of these did I mean to use?”

Give your package list a little dignity.

05/20/2026

Claude Mythos is getting a lot of attention right now.

Fair. AI-assisted vulnerability discovery is moving faster, and that has real consequences for security teams.

But for sysadmins, the takeaway is almost annoyingly practical: The basics still matter.

Know what you manage, patch what’s missing, keep unsupported systems from quietly becoming permanent, automate the repetitive work, and verify that updates actually deployed.

We broke down what Claude Mythos means for sysadmins ... and why the boring stuff still wins.

Read the blog: https://hubs.ly/Q04hcp-y0

05/19/2026

The land is under attack from malware, ransomware, and a cult with absolutely terrible change management practices.

Good thing our heroes are sysadmins.

https://hubs.ly/Q04ghBFs0

05/18/2026

The best conversations at the PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit often happen after hours. This episode of The PowerShell Podcast proves it.

Andrew Pla brought the mic to the hotel bar and caught four conversations that feel exactly like the best part of a tech conference: The stuff that happens after the scheduled sessions are over.

Josh Gratton talks about OnRamp, PowerShell, and the career pivot that took him from service desk to junior systems engineer.

Mark Go gets into the first-time Summit speaker experience, community nerves, and showing up anyway.

Craig Mileham came in as a podcast listener and Summit first-timer from higher ed IT, then left with ideas he could actually bring back to his help desk team.

Matt Zaske brings the Home Assistant lightning demo, soldering, IoT, 3D printing, and a strong case for getting on his level.

The whole episode keeps circling one idea: Community makes the hard parts less lonely.

The hard part is that you have to make the first move. Apply for the thing. Ask the question. Walk up to the table. Be the new person for five awkward minutes.

That’s usually where the good stuff starts.

Listen here:

It's PowerShell After Dark. Recorded live at the PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit in Bellevue, Washington, host Andrew Pla takes his mic to the hotel bar for a...

05/17/2026

The confetti was legally required.

The PowerShell Scanner is now in PDQ Connect, so you can pull custom device data into inventory with your own scripts, then use it for filters, reports, groups, and automations.