This Monday morning I awoke to dark skies, rain falling… the day wasn’t looking too good. My Blackberry woke up a few seconds after me, beeping with my special “urgent” email tone alert. It’s an email from Best Buy, adding joy to my wonderful Monday morning. While opening that email, I get another one from a financial institution I deal with. They both said the same thing:

“Recently, we were notified of a system breach at Epsilon, a third-party vendor that provides marketing services to a number of companies, including us. The information obtained was limited to customer name and email addresses of some credit card customers. No account information or other information was compromised.”

While checking on the Web for more details about the story, I sadly discover a third company I do business with, showing the same kind of warning on their website. Here’s a list of the affected sites I compiled from various articles I found on the web.

Read complete article:
http://www.emailsecuritymatters.com/site/blog/email-security/epsilon-security-breach-data-theft-major-spear-phishing-targets/

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.

Windows Search is a powerful search engine built-in Windows 7.  It was known as Desktop Search 4.0 in Windows XP. It uses an indexing engine that runs in the background and lets you use an Search window to perform queries.

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).

Read complete article here:
http://www.emailsecuritymatters.com/site/blog/best-practices/windows-search-windows-7-outlook-2007/

Read article:
http://www.emailsecuritymatters.com/site/blog/email-security/email-security-grader-more-security-through-education-and-community/

The security battle today has two main fronts: systems and education of users. Email Security Grader hopes to promote the education of network admins on email security.

Read article:
http://www.emailsecuritymatters.com/site/blog/email-security/email-security-grader-more-security-through-education-and-community/

http://www.emailsecuritygrader.com.

Read article on ESG here: http://www.emailsecuritymatters.com/site/blog/email-security/mail-server-test-blacklist-open-relay-smtp-dns/

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.

http://www.emailsecuritygrader.com.

Read article on ESG here: http://www.emailsecuritymatters.com/site/blog/email-security/mail-server-test-blacklist-open-relay-smtp-dns/

Extensive and relevant Email Security Tests

Built around a very simple interface, ESG simply asks for the domain name you want to test. It will then conduct a series of tests and analysis:

* MX records check
* Reverse DNS test
* DNSBL (Spam Blacklist) check
* SPF record verification (server- and client-side)
* Open Relay test and Email format validation
* SMTP, POP3 and IMAP clear text authentication

Once the test is complete, ESG will present the user with a full Email Security Report, including a score (in percent), a rating (from very poor to very good security) as well as an extensive set of information ranging from what each test does to why it is important to solve the issue.

Source:

http://www.emailsecuritymatters.com/site/blog/email-security/mail-server-test-blacklist-open-relay-smtp-dns/