Tag: Server
Have You Checked Your Email Server’s Reputation?
Most ISPs (big or small) are not aware of their company’s status on the Internet; let alone what it is and how to check it. In fact, it is called a reputation, and this is the grade that is given to either your domain name (or the domains hosted on your system) and/or the IP addresses that you use to send mail out. (Feb 17, 2011)
Three ways configure a spam filter with Exchange Server
Here are three ways that you can configure a spam filter with Microsoft Exchange Server. (Feb 07, 2011)
How to Troubleshoot 501 5.7.1 Errors with Exchange
If you’ve ever had “501 5.7.1 This system is not configured to relay mail from…” errors when relaying email through Exchange, it means that your email client did not properly log on to the mail server because it failed the SMTP authentication check. (Jan 31, 2011)
Troubleshooting your mail server part 2
In Part 1 of Troubleshooting your email server, I showed you how to use telnet to determine whether or not your mail server is having communication problems on port 25. In this part, we’ll see how to test address resolution to check for DNS Server problems (Jan 27, 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)
Slow Mail Server? Not so Fast!
You just completed installing a brand new mail server, and the mailboxes have been configured and enabled. The newly mounted server is a monster: able to take punishment, heavy loads, and process data in a flash. (Dec 01, 2010)
Is my hard drive healthy?
The hard drive is rarely considered the primary cause in bottleneck cases; we usually tend to suspect the applications installed on the server. People often think the source of system performance issues is either disk corruption or insufficient disk space, but Physical Disk: %disk time and Physical Disk: Current Disk Queue Length are equally important metrics that work in parallel. There are few other ways to detect hard drive problems using other metrics, but for now I will only focus on these two performance counters. (Nov 17, 2010)
Quick and dirty database replication with MS-SQL
Microsoft SQL and SQL Express both provide a T-SQL (Transact SQL) command-line interpreter that you can use to automate backup and restore processes. It enables you to utilize publisher/publishee configurations for real-time or near real-time replication. Sometimes, though, all you may want to do is run a daily backup of the database on one SQL Server and restore it to a second SQL Server to keep a "warm standby" available. This can be done easily with a pair of simple batch files. Here’s how you do it: (Oct 18, 2010)
Word of the Week: Email Bomb
An email bomb is the act of sending copious amounts of e-mail in an attempt to overflow a mailbox or crash the mail server. (Sep 29, 2010)
Cool Tool: IMAPCOPY
Have you ever had to migrate mailboxes from server X to server Y? Unfortunately, each type of MTA natively stores mailboxes and folders differently from other MTAs (Sep 08, 2010)
Who is Responsible for Internet Security: A Response
Basically you have the Australian courts who want to place the onus on the shoulders of end-users. Others want to put the responsibility on Operating System or Application vendors due to their security holes. Finally, you have the Mail System operators or Network connectivity providers (ISPs) who don't take sufficient measures to combat open relays or botnets where infected machines act like SMTP proxies. (Jul 26, 2010)
Honest, I don’t want an email security appliance!
Vendors have their own very special reasons for pushing email security appliances, instead of virtual machines or straight software installations. You may find that their reasons do not always align with your own. (Jun 14, 2010)
Most Common Support Issue: Whitelist = Spoofed Spam
No one likes to see spam in their Inbox, especially when it comes from themselves! Users often get confused and even worry that their identity has been stolen. The main cause for this is that they have whitelisted their own email address to bypass scanning for outbound traffic. Users do not realize (or understand) that spammers can spoof their email address and send spam that appears to be from themselves. (May 14, 2010)
Your mail server might not be the cause of delivery problems
Most support people have seen every mail server configuration possible, and others that would have been considered impossible. No matter whether the operating budget is very tight, mega-sized or somewhere in between, people often try to throw everything onto a single server, including the kitchen sink. Well, that kitchen sink is often the cause of email blockage, rather than the actual mail server program. Even a honking new machine with mega-sized specs can have performance problems if it becomes bloated with unnecessary and/or resource hogging apps. (May 03, 2010)
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)
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)
How would you punish a spammer?
“Last time out I suggested sentencing spammers to some quality time in a maximum security cell with an ex-biker named "Tiny." But I think that's too good for these people. They should be strung up by their thumbs and forced to watch ShamWow infomercials and Rick Astley videos until their ears bleed.” Robert Cringely, InfoWorld 1 (Feb 03, 2010)
10 Resolutions You Shouldn’t Break This Year
It's that time of the year again..time to make (and break) resolutions. Here are some things to help you keep your email and network safe from malicious attacks. Resolutions you don't want to break! (Jan 08, 2010)
Spoofing: are you who you say you are?
Spammers often play games with the 'From' field but there are Internet standards that can help you easily determine whether the sender is who he claims to be. (Dec 11, 2009)
You only have one reputation – don’t lose it
Having a bad reputation might have seemed cool when you were a teenager, but if your email server has been given a bad rap, it’s definitely UNcool – especially if your business depends on delivering email. Trying to get your reputation back can be time consuming and costly, so the best approach is to do your utmost not to lose it in the first place. (Dec 02, 2009)





