Friendly reminder to trim your services list with msconfig if using Windows. Services that are STOPPED are not DISABLED, and they can be brought back up when just stopped, sometimes remotely.

(This reduces chances of being bitten by malware that uses the Fax service or similar, as there are a few that have in past used often-unused services to propagate. It also reclaims a small bit of memory, and the more real memory you have, the less you page out when compiling or similar, which is slow as fuck.)

also for the love of god stop using RDP and use something that's more penetration-proof than a paper plate...

*sweats in open rdp session as I type this*

Anything you'd recommend than RDP?

@ScribeOfGoD autodesk, teamviewer, VNC...

@Parzi people still recommend team viewer? I heard that was a bad idea security wise as well. Plus I always found it clunky and slow, even on decent net and systems

@ScribeOfGoD it's less secure, yes, but as an alternative to RDP, it's still an improvement.

@Parzi if it's less secure, please explain how it is an improvement

@ReverendLovejoy "less secure" at an absolute level, compared to RDP it's more secure. Bad wording...

So how do I disable Cortana?

VNC? Not even encrypted. So I need an additional SSH server as well... (Great, two additional peaces of software I have to update separately w/o Windows update, to replace one within my normal patch cycle). Additionally store many VNC servers there password insecurely.

Teamviewer? If their servers are offline, I cannot access mine anymore! Additionally it always can be attacked from anywhere, whereas I can restrict RDP with firewall policies.
Not to say I have to pay for it quite a sum as a company.

Autodesk? They have remote management software? If you mean Autodesk Remote, it has been officially discontinued.

On an updated Windows server, I see no reasons to disable RDP.
That said, it's obvious to not make it available from the internet, but made only accessible from a VPN or internal networks.

@ScribeOfGoD @Parzi may I recommend Parsec?

It's for game streaming but works really well for pretty much everything.

It's also dependent on their servers being up so that might be a downer for you, but it works really well.

@RememberMe parsec looks cool, I'll def end up playing with it. I've been using NoMachine and enjoying that