Layered Email Defense

Found an article posted on eWeek awhile ago most illuminating, as it had to do with layering your defenses. While this had to do with total computer security, which means firewall, perimeter, data protection, and other such stuff, you could very well say the exact same thing about email defenses.

As email is one of the central attack vectors of a company, whether in the form virus or spam attacks, the whole reason we developed MPP is so you could layer your email security. That gives a large email service provider both choices and redundancy, so if one scanner fails, another is right behind with a better trap.

You can give us a look right here.

Criminalization of Spam

In what is another disturbing example of the complete criminalization of spam, Microsoft has been forced into reconsidering their their all-too predictable Patch Tuesday schedule.

The vulnerability was speeding it's way through the back-alleys of the internet, and apparently the Zero-Day Emergency Response Team (ZERT) was picking up a number of spam messages that, if opened, would expose any Windows machine to the vulnerability, which basically allows the attacker complete control over the computer.

All the more reason that service providers and large email providers absolutely must minimize any and all spam messages reaching users in-boxes. How do they do that? Very simply, with a powerful engine that enables users to plug in as many spam and virus filters as needed, either commercial or open source. Check us out at Message Partners.

Death Threat Spam

As we should have figured, Spam has upped the ante once again, and the new version of spam attempting to spread malware far and wide now carries in it's subject matter an actual death threat.

This threat, which is known as the 419 death threat, is the newest form of social engineering, in that it tries to break through the spam-clutter by praying on people's fears to, in this case, make contact with an email address, which will then lead to all sorts of things, none of them good.

An example of the text in the message follows:

"Hello, I wish to let you know that i have been paid by a client to assasinate you at convenience,and i have signed a contract of $650,000 yesterday for this. I have never met you before, but they gave me the full description of your identity and contact, together with your photograph which my boys have used to trace you. The reason why they want you Dead is not disclosed to me as i was not allowed to know,but you are now not better that the dead ok."

Clearly, cybercriminals will go to any lengths to earn themselves a quick buck, but the only thing that should actually die is spam, and as I said yesterday, Message Partners tested the highest in spam detection accuracy, so isn't it about time you silenced spam completely?

System Administrator Day

Many people don't realize that, the Monday after Mother's Day, in the computer world, it is System Administrator day. And instead of flowers or chocolates there is a much better gift to give them: we currently call it Postfixer.

Postfixer is perfect for any Sys Admin who is trying to juggle many different open source email tools into one functioning email system. While open source has many fantastic tools, with Postfix being one of the best, trying to get all the different applications to work together can require countless hours applying patches or writing quick-fix scripts.

And because it is Sys Admin day, we are offering Postfixer for a low price of $199 dollars. So for the price of just one new email add-on (in terms of Sys Administrator hours), you can buy the program that does it all for you. Read more right here.

Polymorphic Threats

I have been reading up on recent reports about Polymorphic Threats, and how they are being used to help botnets continue their dominance. Polymorphic malware is malicious code that constantly changes itself to make it undetectable to both signature and behavioral based filters.

While these threats have been around since the 80's, and there were a series of outbreaks in the early 2000s, only lately have they entered the news again. One recent example is the "Storm Worm," of which the company, Commtouch, detected tens of thousands of variants, which is characteristic of polymorphic threats.

This means that the many of the old methods of scanning for malware simply don't work anymore, as they cannot pick up variants. Today, besides standard malware searches, a company's defense must also have something that scans for variants.

Message Partners has exactly such a system, and we have found great success using Commtouch partnered with other, more general AV and AS scanners that, while they might not look as closely, can operate much faster and weed out a majority of the easy-to-find bad stuff. Layered defenses are now a necessity. Read more about us at Message Partners.

The Botnet Threat

Was recently reading an article on the biggest security concerns for system administrators, and once again, the botnet threat was in the top five. What's so scary about botnets is the fact that, as the recent publicized attack didn't seem to have any motive, experts are suggesting it was just a trial run, and that something much bigger is yet to come.

I don't see a better reason why email service providers, especially large service providers, need a high-performing email platform, and there is simply not one better than the one at Message Partners.