July 2007

Welcome to the News@Alt-N monthly newsletter. Every month we will bring you the latest information about products, recent developments, and tips intended to keep you informed about what is happening at Alt-N Technologies.

In This Issue:

• In Focus
• What's New
• Recent Knowledge Base Articles
• Did You Know?
• Product Updates

In Focus — Server-Side Security Vulnerability Growing

Polymorphic spam, zero-hour vulnerabilities, misleading executables - the creativity and complexity by which spammers and virus writers are using new techniques and methods to evade email security grows everyday. Relying only on reactive, signature-based security applications, such as traditional anti-virus programs, leaves your business exposed to these devastating new forms of attack.

According to data from the Commtouch Security Detection Center, which monitors Internet message traffic trends, a growing spike in PDF spam over a 24-hour period accounted for 10-15% of all spam messages measured. These PDF messages are nearly 4 times larger than "standard" spam messages and effectively increased overall global spam traffic by 30-40%. This new technique of sending spam messages as a PDF attachment first appeared in late June. It is now evident that this technique has been adopted by spammers on a wide scale.

The popularity of the PDF format for legitimate business communications makes it difficult for traditional anti-spam solutions to block effectively, without causing massive false positives. The spammers have noticed how easy it is to bypass anti-spam engines, and for the most part have stopped trying to "hide" their messages with various fonts and colors. Instead, they are sending what appear to be standard business letters via PDF (until you notice that they are selling unsolicited products or services).

SecurityPlus for MDaemon combats the latest threats of malicious email-borne attacks and PDF spam by providing proactive, real-time detection based on distribution patterns and not just on message content. This extra layer of protection allows MDaemon servers to detect and filter this type of spam when other solutions fail.

Identifying threats based upon real-time pattern detection techniques means that your business does not need to wait hours, or even days, to receive signatures alerting you to vulnerabilities that may have already hit your network. To understand the impact such delays can have, you can access the June Virus Outbreak Report to view examples of specific outbreaks and the delay in protection from such signature-based security applications as CA, McAfee, Symantec and others (based upon results from av-test.org).

To learn more about the new threats and trends affecting email security, Alt-N Technologies is providing the Malware Outbreak Trends Report. In this report, you will learn how the technologies included in SecurityPlus, are combating these latest threats. To learn the full story, download the report now - Malware Trends.

To be sure you have the necessary security protection to proactively fight these threats, download SecurityPlus today!

Do you have a story about how SecurityPlus is helping protect your business? Send your story to marketing@altn.com and we'll give you some cool Alt-N gear.

What's New

Free Email Certification Service Grows

Since the release of MDaemon 9.6 last month, over 400 domains have been registered for the free email certification service offered by Alt-N Technologies. This service enables the MDaemon user community to benefit from the Vouch By Reference (VBR) mechanism and "vouch" for email messages sent by MDaemon customers who elect to participate in this service. To learn more, visit the Email Certification information and sign-up page.

Recent Web Site Updates

In an effort to continuously improve our web site and make it easier to find what you are looking for, we recently modified the Upgrade Protection area and added a new page: Upgrades & Renewals. You can now go to a single page when you are ready to increase your license size, change your license type from Standard to Pro, or extend the Upgrade Protection of your existing software.

We have made improvements to the SecurityPlus Urgent Updates page. Because we want our customers to receive the highest level of security possible, these "updates" provide additional SecurityPlus antivirus definitions beyond regularly scheduled updates, and automatically initiate a database update when they are received. Therefore if a major virus is discovered, your business will be protected as soon as new virus definitions are ready. To take advantage of this additional layer of security, simply enter your domain name on our SecurityPlus Urgent Updates page.

Latest MDaemon Case Studies

Powerful features and easy administration were the primary drivers that led this global tool wholesaler to select MDaemon as its email platform. Draper Tools exports hardware to 61 nations, and has around 100 PCs connected over a LAN spread across three sites, and approximately 70 remote users. MDaemon delivers safe email communications, saving them money and time.

This leading global product equipment listing service relies on MDaemon to "host email for companies that live and breathe…e-commerce," according to its IT manager. Learn more about why ELS selected MDaemon to process its more than 80,000 messages each day.

Do you have a story about how MDaemon is helping your business communications? Send your story to us marketing@altn.com and we'll give you some cool Alt-N gear.

Postings from Arvel's Blog

Do you ever wonder what Arvel Hathcock (Alt-N Technologies' CEO) is thinking about? Well, besides discussing the virtues of our latest release of the MDaemon Email Server for Windows, he needs to take a break every now and then. Read the adventures of how his recent pleasure cruise became anything but pleasurable.

Recent Alt-N Knowledge Base Articles

1767

What's new in MDaemon 9.6?

1828

How can I restrict who may email certain users on my domain?

1829

What's the difference between DomainPOP and MultiPOP?

1830

SecurityPlus 3.05 and Internet Watch Foundation support

1831

Account Grouping

1832

Subaddressing for automatic message routing

1833

Message Certification (VBR)

1834

Minger server in MDaemon Pro

Did You Know?

When talking with customers, we often hear, "I didn't know that!" So, we have dedicated this section to providing you with a few helpful hints:

MDaemon

Pruning automatically deletes messages and accounts based on age and activity. When old messages are pruned, rather than actually deleting them, MDaemon moves them to the '...\BADMSGS\[Mailbox]\' folder where they can be manually deleted by the administrator or a nightly process. When an account is pruned, it will be deleted along with its messages instead of moved. To learn more, visit AccountPrune.txt in the '...MDaemon\App\' folder for additional information and command line options.

Before attempting to synchronize using SyncML, a user must log in to WorldClient one time.

When supporting multiple domains for the WorldClient web mail service, a unique date display format can be used for each domain.

Occasionally, email list users will attempt to subscribe or unsubscribe by sending the commands to the list itself rather than to the MDaemon system account. This results in the command being posted to the list rather than the user being subscribed or unsubscribed. To prevent these sorts of messages from being posted to mailing lists, enable the 'Pre-process mailing list mail' control on the 'System' tab of 'Miscellaneous Options'. This will cause messages containing 'subscribe', 'unsubscribe', and 'signoff' commands in the first line of the message body to be rejected when those commands contain the list name and are sent to the list's address rather than the system account.

There are several controls on the Miscellaneous Options dialog governing the amount of log data that may be displayed in the Event Tracking window of MDaemon's main interface. To learn more about this option, review the Miscellaneous Options section on page 325 of the MDaemon 9.6 user manual.

RelayFax

When utilizing RelayFax's CND features you must specify at least two rings before answering because CND data is transmitted between the first and second ring.

In RelayFax, numbers entered for the Fax Number and Voice Number will appear on any cover pages.

SecurityPlus

SecurityPlus can be selectively enabled for each secondary domain in MDaemon.

Outbreak Protection is based on zero-hour technology, which compares incoming messages to patterns taken from millions of internet email messages sampled daily from multiple sources worldwide. This process is completely secure for all your email and never resends your email content to any location.

Product Updates

MDaemon 9.6 - Now Available!

This is our best version ever! Don't believe us? Read what some of our customers who have upgraded think:

"This release simply is the best ever. …no other MTA on the planet has this mix of features all rolled into one program. It makes administering a mail server an absolute pleasure from every perspective, let alone easy to use and setup. Oh, did I mention that not one spam or phish has entered my clients' inbox? One thing I always enjoy about MDaemon is your ability to add the latest technology into production, while others just talk about how good it would be to have that. This is an amazing product. It is so good, that I just wonder in amazement where in the world you could possibly be taking us next :)"
— Gary

"I have been using (administering) MDaemon for almost 9 years and not once has a new version let me down in my expectations. (MDaemon) 9.6 continues this tradition with industry leading features, solid performance and no (that I could find) bugs. It's the one and only software that gives me all the arguments I need to convince management to renew its license, year in year out."
—Dionysis

"MDaemon's Anti-Spam (SecurityPlus) is the best we have come across over the years… it is a valuable tool in protecting staff and students from unwanted email."
— John

If you haven't downloaded the latest version, get it now!

Comments

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