Author: Damien Ramé
Damien Ramé
Damien started down the geek road when he got his first computer at age 10: an Atari 400 with a 1.8MHz 6502 CPU, 8K of RAM, no storage (only a true geek includes those stats!). And he hasn’t looked back since: this Software Engineer has administered Linux and Windows servers, developed high- and low-level software and firmware code in a variety of languages, worked in telecommunications, networking and IT, and… ended up getting an MBA while developing a passion for marketing. He’s now a tech-savvy marketer who can talk the talk and walk the walk.
Articles by this author
Recent Winners of Fight Email Spam Survey
We are extremely pleased with the tremendous response that we have received to this point from our Fight Email Spam survey. As promised we have randomly selected winners of our gift card prizes. (Jan 23, 2012)
Email Usage Survey - are you overloaded?
We are currently conducting a market research on email usage at work. Thank you for filling our this very short survey. (Jan 12, 2012)
Anti-Spam for Exchange: Multi-Layer, Per-Domain & Per-User Configuration & Reports
Does your anti-spam solution provide you with granular, muti-layer configuration and reports? Have you ever found yourself wishing you were able to set one domain’s, one department’s or one user’s anti-spam filtering differently than the rest? Multi-layer per-domain and per-user configuration is the correct prescription. (Dec 16, 2011)
Fight Email Spam and Win!
We want to hear what spam challenges you face - even if you don’t use Vircom’s spam solutions. Take our 3-minute survey on Spam and enter for a chance to win cool prizes, including the new iPhone 4S. We will use the data to continue improving our product and will share our findings with you. (Dec 09, 2011)
Orange.fr doesn’t get it. Spam !
I just came back from a 2-week vacation in France. Prior to leaving, I looked at Orange.fr, a large service provider in France that offered, among other things, mobile phone plans. The idea was to get a prepaid SIM card for my mobile phone, so that I could have a local (French) number to use in case of emergency. Adding an item to my shopping cart on Orange.fr resulted in getting spammed by them every single day for 15 days! (Sep 06, 2011)
The Evolution of Spam
Even spammers evolve with time. As we become better equipped to deal with traditional spam email, spammers have had to rethink their methods of cyber attack. The result is phishing - targeted attacks aimed to gain access to highly sensitive personal or corporate data, such as usernames, passwords or credit card details, by luring unsuspecting recipients via email to a fake website disguised as a legitimate one from a trusted source. (Aug 25, 2011)
It Won’t Happen to Me
I came across an interesting report entitled ‘2010 MAAWG Email Security Awareness and Usage Report’ from the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG). The report was compiled from a January 2010 survey that the MAAWG conducted of more than 3,700 email users (who do not rely on an IT person to manage their email address) in 6 countries including Canada, US, France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom and gives insight into the behaviors of respondents regarding email usage and computer viruses. (Aug 02, 2011)
Unsolicited Bulk Email i.e. Spam!
Spam is defined as unsolicited bulk email (UBE). We all receive unsolicited email every day (advertisements, sales enquiries, job enquiries). That alone doesn’t make it spam. It takes two to tango. An email is considered spam only if it is both unsolicited and sent in bulk to a large quantity of recipients. (Jul 26, 2011)
How to create a self-signed SSL certificate for Exchange 2003/2007/2010 on Windows Server
Here is a step-by-step guide and how to create your own self-signed certificate (for free) using Windows (I used 2003 but this should work on 2008 as well) and Exchange 2003-2007-2010. (Jun 21, 2011)
Rustock & Other Major Spam Botnets That Unleashed Their Zombie Armies On To The Web
When the infamous Rustock botnet was taken down, it helped reduce one third of all junk email being sent. Botnets are responsible for an average of 88% of all spam sent globally. For anyone new to the term, a botnet is essentially a network of infected computers (i.e. zombie computers) operated by criminal entities, which are programmed to perform malicious tasks or functions. (Jun 14, 2011)
To Delete or to Quarantine? An answer
A couple days ago, a fellow anti-spam specialist posted an interesting article called "To Delete or to Quarantine? That is the Question" on the GFI blog, AllSpammedUp. I would recommend you read his article prior to this one. The author, Ed Fisher, was discussing several of the problems attached to spam-quarantine management from both an IT administrator's and an end-user's perspective. Within my role at Vircom Email Security, I've asked myself the exact same questions a couple months ago during what became the directQuarantine product definition. (May 27, 2011)
IPv6 Adoption (US, Europe & Global)
In a previous article, I was talking about the challenges that Service Providers, SMB and Vendors will be facing with IPv6. Now, I would like us to take a look at the current adoption rate for IPv6 for the United States, Europe and the entire World. (May 04, 2011)
IPv6 for Service Providers, SMBs and Technology providers
In the late nineties, there was Y2K. Governments, businesses and individuals got scared big time. As a consequence, massive amounts of money were invested to prevent doomsday before it was too late. And it paid off. More than 10 years later, we can say the transition from the second to the third millennium was pretty smooth. Again, the world is faced with a new threat: IPv4 has ran out of addresses. (Apr 28, 2011)
Poll: Corporate Email Security Solutions
What is most important to you for an email security and anti-spam corporate solution? (Apr 04, 2011)
Anti-Spam Performance Awards in the Real World
Why would an anti-spam filter with tons of awards guaranteeing 99.9%+ catch rate and ultra-low false positive rates perform poorly in the real world? Why would an email security software from another vendor do better despite having a lower score in the same certification/award program? (Feb 28, 2011)
Thierry Breton to eradicate email? Can’t wait to see!
French web site 01net.com published yesterday an article interviewing Thierry Breton, politician, ex-Chairman & CEO of France Telecom and current CEO of Atos Origin. M. Breton claims he wants to eradicate email within his organization, and use Instant Messaging exclusively. I wanted to wish him Good Luck. (Feb 10, 2011)
Windows Search with Windows 7 and Outlook 2007
There are many things I hate when it comes to email. Even more so when it comes to Outlook. Searching, and in particular, finding what I'm looking for is one these. This little how to will show you how to use Windows Search to quickly and efficiently search your Outlook PST or OST files (emails, calendar items, tasks, contacts). (Feb 09, 2011)
Top 10 Exchange Blogs
So... you're still a busy-bee, aren't you? After the success of the "Top 10 Email Security Blogs" article, I decided to go further and provide you with Email Security Matters' Top 10 Exchange Blogs now. (Jan 05, 2011)
In the war against spam, where does legislation fit in?
Currently, there are several different approaches to fighting spam, including:Technological, Associative and Legislative.Today I’ll talk about the legislative approach: what it actually represents, along with its status, limitations and weaknesses. (Dec 06, 2010)
Time to give up on GFI/SORBS?
A year ago, in november 2009, GFI Software acquired spam blocklist provider SORBS promising improvements to the responsiveness and data quality problems. Has anything changed? (Dec 03, 2010)
Mark Zuckerberg commented on your photo
This is a new spam that has just started showing up in my inbox. A few others seem to have received it. It seems like a non-threatening phishing attempt redirecting clickers to mysearchmusic.com. The destination site seems unharmful at first glance, and acts as a MP3 Search Engine, with Google AdSense. (Nov 24, 2010)
Top 10 Email Security Blogs
I know you're busy. You don't have time to look for pertinent blogs all over the Net: go to Google, find a million search results, browse through the first 50 and find most of them are either generally unrelated, unfocused or simply out of date or inactive. So, to save you time and effort, we here at Email Security Matters have compiled our own Top 10 Email Security Blogs! (Nov 10, 2010)
Test your mail server security infrastructure with Email Security Grader
Email Security Grader is a free online tool which helps IT and mail administrators evaluate the security of their mail infrastructure. The web site regroups several important tests (spam blacklist, open relay, mx records, smtp/pop3/imap authentication), educates users and makes recommendations for each aspect of email security. (Nov 01, 2010)
Stop Social Spam on Twitter
My last article was on stopping and getting rid of Comment and Registration spam on WordPress. Today, I’d like to cover another Social Spam topic: Twitter. You can bet all social networks are a target, and Twitter is no different. Here are a couple tips to minimize and get rid of the Twitter spam such as Direct Message (DM) spam. (Aug 03, 2010)
Get rid of Social Spam on WordPress (Comment & Registration Spam)
The hot topic of the past few years certainly has been Social Networking and the Web 2.0! So, you started a blog on your own domain, have spent a lot of time writing relevant quality content, performing SEO, integrating into social networks to distribute your news. Now, your site is starting to get decent exposure from Search Engines and Social Networks, traffic is building up and so is spam. This damn spam. After being spammed for years through email, now you also get it on your blog. Of course, spammers have identified this new source. It offers basically the same potential as email (and actually an even better potential), so they want to be there as well. There is spam whose purpose is SEO (improve backlinks), some others are about phishing, identity theft, or malware. Let's see how to get rid of all this noise once and for all. (Jul 16, 2010)
Share NTFS USB Hard Drive on VMware vSphere/ESX 4
The other day, I was discussing virtualization in email security (for example, anti spam virtual appliance). One of the drawbacks of ESX (and ESXi) is the lack of support for external data storage (non Data Store). Of course, you can add a multitude of data stores, local and remote, and it is THE way to go. But I needed to be able to backup my virtual appliances to an external hard drive using NTFS (so that it can be read on my Windows machines). (Jun 29, 2010)
Are Canadian spammers above the law?
I certainly hope not. Ever heard about that guy, Adam Guerbuez? Using some scripts, he sent over 4 million spams through Facebook’s Wall in 2008. After being sued by Facebook under the CAN-SPAM act, he was found guilty (Guerbez didn’t even bother showing up for the trial) and was charged a 873M$ fine. That turns out to be about a BILLION Canadian Dollars. (May 28, 2010)
My catch-rate is better than yours… nah, nah!
Have you seen how some email security vendors seem to focus almost exclusively on their catch-rate and false-positive rates? Okay. So everyone in the industry does 99%+ catch-rate and less than 0.5% false positives,we do it, they do it. Woopdeedooo, let’s do the happy dance! And that’s the only thing many vendors will push for. Features? Blah. Easy to use? Blah. Support? Double blah (many outsource it offshore anyway). (Apr 14, 2010)
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)
Less Linux, more Windows
I’ve always been a pro-Linux type of guy. I started using Unix back in 1992 (SunOS) and then onto Slackware, Red Hat, Ubuntu. Linux offered so many more features, security, power to do anything and a reliability Windows couldn’t dream of at the time. Linux was a true multitasking OS, had a firewall, and all internet clients and servers one may want or need: pop3, smtp, http, ftp, ssh. All these were virtually impossible to do on MS-DOS or Windows, and I’m not even talking about the various crashes and ridiculous uptimes of the early Microsoft platforms. Since then, and up until a few months ago, it’s always been clear to me: reliability and security on Linux; office work, graphical user interface and leisure on Windows. (Feb 05, 2010)
More Recent News
Recent Spam Survey Winners
We are extremely pleased with the tremendous response that we have received to this point from our Fight Email Spam survey. As promised we have randomly selected winners of our gift card prizes. (Jan 23, 2012)
New Year's Resolution
We spend 8 to 10 (or more) hours a day at work - more time than we spend anywhere else - and our desks/workspaces are becoming our kitchen tables. But, do you realize that our desks are covered in more bacteria... (Jan 20, 2012)
Email Usage Survey
We are currently conducting a market research on email usage at work. Thank you for filling our this very short survey. (Jan 12, 2012)
