June 2007
Welcome to the new News@Alt-N monthly newsletter. Every month we will bring you the latest information about products, latest developments, and tips intended to keep you informed about what is happening at Alt-N Technologies.
In This Issue:
What's New
Greater Support Flexibility
Customers have been asking for support options, such as Support Agreements, that will enable them to better manage their operating budgets. To meet this request, Alt-N Technologies now offers six-month and one-year Support Agreements for MDaemon, Outlook Connector, and RelayFax. Learn more...
Alt-N Joins Fortune 500 Companies That Are Recognized for Online Safety Leadership
"You don't have to be a large enterprise to be concerned about email threats to your business," said Arvel Hathcock, Founder and CEO of Alt-N Technologies, when accepting the Authentication and Online Trust Alliance's (AOTA) first annual Online Safety Leadership Award. Recognition was given to select companies that are going above and beyond their industry peers in facilitating best practices and deploying authentication and reputation standards to improve safety on the Internet. "Small and medium businesses that do not have large IT staffs want the same level of protection from email-borne threats for their businesses and their customers," said Arvel.
Recently, Alt-N received this prestigious award in recognition for its deployment and support of authentication protocols, such as DKIM, Sender ID, DomainKeys, and SPF, in the MDaemon email server. The award also recognized Alt-N's ability to rapidly deploy security technologies in its products to protect customers from spam, phishing and other forms of malware.
"We are honored that our commitment to rapidly transform online safety concepts into real-world products for the small-to-medium business community has been recognized by the AOTA," Arvel went on to say. "We will continue to expand our promotion of online safety features to the MDaemon email server user community by deploying additional safety functionality such as backscatter protection and email certification in 2007." Read the press release...
Postings from Arvel's Blog
Do you ever wonder what Arvel is thinking about? Check out his Blog to learn more on what's being done on email security from an industry expert's perspective. The latest topics include:
- Thoughts on the AOTA 2007 Summit and online trust in email
- DKIM is now an industry standard
Recent Alt-N Knowledge Base Articles
Did You Know?
Quicker File Downloads for Mobility Users
A powerful but little known feature in MDaemon Pro is the ability to minimize file size of incoming messages by automatically stripping attachments from inbound emails, copying them to a specified location, then adding a hyperlink of the stripped attachment to the text of the message. Using this feature can significantly reduce the amount of data sent between email clients and the server. This feature is especially useful in some situations where mobile devices are deployed. The feature can be found under MDaemon's Setup menu and is described in more detail in MDaemon's Help file.
MDaemon's Vista / Server 2008 Compatibility
We have been conducting evaluations of our products against the new system requirements of the Vista and Windows Server 2008 platforms. Based upon our testing and evaluations, MDaemon is not yet fully compatible with Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008. We will support these new platforms soon and will notify customers and partners when the product can be reliably deployed on these latest operating platforms.
Tips on Managing Email
- Aim to only have emails in your Inbox that you're still dealing with on a day-to-day basis
- Try to keep your Inbox message list small enough so that it fits on one screen
- Split folders with large volumes of email into separate sub-folders based on the month or year
- Make use of your own personal filter rules to automatically file emails that you receive regularly but don't need to read every day
- Consider archiving very old emails off to permanent storage (eg. CD-R or DVD-R)
- Configure your email client to empty your trash folder on exit
- Sort your Inbox so that the newest messages are at the top
Email signatures and other email netiquette guidelines
We receive many questions about whether MDaemon can add fancy signatures to emails containing HTML formatting and images. MDaemon itself only supports plain text signatures; however, email clients such as WorldClient support HTML formatting. Large HTML signatures, especially with images, should be avoided wherever possible as they waste bandwidth and the message could be flagged as spam by other servers. It is recommended that email signatures should contain appropriate contact information; be short and to the point (4 - 6 lines max); and information should be in plain text. For more information check out the Wikipedia entry on Signature Blocks.
Product Updates
Outlook Connector for MDaemon 2.1.5 — Now Available!
New feature enhancements have been added to this latest version. See the release notes for specific information.
MDaemon 9.6 will incorporate a significant number of improvements and features. Many of the more important new features are identified below:
Returned Messages You Didn't Send... Backscatter Protection
Backscatter occurs when spam or viruses send email using a forged address as the return path. This can lead to thousands of bogus delivery status notifications, vacation and out-of-office messages, autoresponders, etc., ending up in users' Inboxes. Backscatter Protection will help significantly in reducing this problem.
Minger Address Verification for Gateways
Alt-N's new 'Minger' protocol provides an easy mechanism for one MDaemon server to query another MDaemon server and check the validity of an email recipient. This will be a very useful feature where an MDaemon server is acting as a backup MX for another primary MX MDaemon server, thereby eliminating the need for LDaemon.
Message Certification - "Vouch By Reference (VBR)"
MDaemon 9.6 will include the world's first commercial implementation of Vouch By Reference. VBR provides a mechanism through which certification providers may vouch for the reputation of a sender and their email messages. Used in combination with an identity authentication protocol such as DKIM, SPF, or DomainKeys, VBR provides a useful way to certify that sent and received messages are to and from genuine entities (as opposed to spammers). Learn more...
Automatic Meeting Acceptance for 'Resource' Type Users
Accounts can now be created as a resource which will automatically accept meeting requests, modifications and cancellations. For example, this feature could be used to create a 'Meeting Room' resource, the calendar of which would be shared for others users to review the room's availability. When booking a meeting, the 'Meeting Room' user would be included as a resource (as opposed to an attendee), and its availability would be updated automatically.
To protect your business from the latest email-borne security threats and practices by malware programmers, make sure you are using the latest version of SecurityPlus for MDaemon. Version 3.05 has a new and improved antivirus engine and more features. Learn more...
We would like to hear from you. If you have comments or suggestions on this specific newsletter please let us know by sending an email to marketing@altn.com.
© 2007 Alt-N Technologies, Ltd. MDaemon is a registered trademark of Alt-N Technologies. All rights reserved.