Archives: March, 2010

Are machines really the “bad guys”?

Do you know what this is? Of course you do! This, along with some other strange stuff, has gained popularity and become part of our virtual life when browsing the web. CAPTCHAs (as they’re known) are one example of a Turing test: a challenge-response criteria that is used to determine the probability that a remote being is actually a human vs. a computer that’s trying to mimic a human response. (Mar 31, 2010)

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Why you shouldn’t cut your email security costs

These days, running a business without email security exposes you to huge, unnecessary risks and costs. What is the cost of security? It should not have a price tag. Imagine having to go through thousands of emails (mostly spam) every day, just to make sure an important message does not get deleted. (Mar 29, 2010)

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Simple Admin Tricks: Quick & Dirty Monitoring

From time to time, you’ll need to monitor a port to see if there's a problem brewing. For smaller companies, it can be quite a chore to deploy some sort of commercial or open-source monitoring solution (e.g., NAGIOS-based stuff), when all you want to do is do some quick and dirty monitoring. (Mar 26, 2010)

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Policy Compliance: Keep it Simple, Stupid!

Are you getting pressured to provide some sort of regulatory compliance rules to your business that will affect your network configuration, your email flow and your end users? Do you have to deal with SOX or HIPAA or GLBA, or ‘Oh Lord, not another Acronym’ regulation (we’ll call it the OLNAA) whose apparent sole purpose is to complicate your life? (Mar 24, 2010)

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Let’s Virtualize Email Security!

Virtualization. Virtual Machine. Virtual Appliance. We keep on hearing these words over and over: they’ve been a recurring topic for a few years now. And it’s growing to the point where the Microsoft vs. Google fight now has a new contender: Microsoft vs. VMware. So, what’s all the buzz about? (Mar 19, 2010)

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(Un)subscribe me

Hundreds of emails get blocked daily by your spam filters, but sometimes one slips through. You look it over and it appears to be very legitimate. You don’t remember clicking ‘Yes’ to subscribe to this newsletter, but you see the classic, “You are receiving this because you subscribed to one of our partners… blah, blah, blah… and this is an excuse for us to send you spam. Yeah, it’s true: XYZ company is one of our partners, we do their mass mailing and we grabbed your address at the same time!” So, now you’re tempted to click the Unsubscribe button, but how can you tell if it’s legit? And how do you know that clicking unsubscribe won’t tell the spammer, “Hey I’m alive and I actually read what you sent - send me more”? (Mar 17, 2010)

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Looked at our site or downloaded our software? Then allow us to harass you!

Some companies take their marketing tools a little too far. Download their software for a trial, or even just visit their website, and you just opened the door to daily email and phone calls from aggressive sales staff pushing their wares. I know the market is competitive, but can we please let the customer make their decision in peace? (Mar 12, 2010)

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Spam by the numbers

So you think spam volumes have gone down, right? Wrong! Have a look at this video which captures the stats quite well…. (Mar 10, 2010)

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Spamhaus releases a new spam-fighting tool

Spamhaus publicly released its new Domain Block List (DBL)1earlier this week, after beta testing it for much of last year. They claim they have had “exceptionally positive” results from the testing, and the premise is really quite interesting. (Mar 03, 2010)

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