Monthly Archives: May 2010

May 2010 Newsletter – Web Security with Webroot

MxToolbox has worked since 2004 to provide free tools to help people diagnose problems with email and to monitor their email servers. MxToolBox also offers paid services to small and medium businesses to help manage and protect their email traffic. With the proliferation of email defense products in use, many sources of online threats have shifted their attention from launching attacks through email systems and have targeted web browsers as an often unguarded entryway into a network. In order to be able to offer protection against these threats, we have partnered with Webroot and are now offering Webroot Web Security to defend this largely overlooked gateway to your network.

The firewall that protects your business network is configured to stop connections that originate from the Internet. However connections that originate from within your network are automatically granted access. Without this ability your employees would not be able to access any online resources outside of your network. Web pages have become much more rich and interactive with the help of new technologies used in web development. These technologies which give new web applications their power and new capabilities are derived from the ability to pass data and code back and forth through the web browser. If your employees are browsing the web unrestricted, this poses serious security concerns for your business.

Web filtering with Webroot accomplishes this protection by downloading a small (1.5MB) web proxy client to the end user workstation. When the Internet is accessed, the URL requested by the browser is passed by this client to the Webroot proxy servers. These servers will fetch a copy of the web page and quickly scan it and return it to the user with only safe content. Browsing does not have any visible latency and users are completely protected against viruses, spy ware and other web-based threats before they reach your network.

One of the greatest security concerns on the Internet today is malware. This malicious software is often distributed via web pages and is designed to infiltrate a computer system without the owner’s knowledge or consent. Currently 85% of dangerous web activity is attributed to malware which makes proactive Web security is a necessity for every business. While Web filtering’s most critical role is to prevent malicious code from being brought in to the network, it can also be used to control access and generate reporting on your web usage.

Access to the Internet brings tremendous value to any organization, not only as a means of global communication, but it also enables employees to have access to competitive information, research markets and opportunities. While this freedom provides additional resources for your organization, it can also open up your organization to attacks that are only able to be defended against by scanning and filtering data coming into the browser.

The increasing demand that many Web applications make on corporate bandwidth is a problem that a comprehensive Web filter can mitigate. Managing bandwidth allows you to give priority to business related functions and, if you have a more liberal web policy, you can at least minimize the amount of bandwidth that users can consume

For those that don’t or can’t have a liberal web policy, filtering can help assist with keeping employees on task and away from certain websites. If your company is not as concerned about these settings, the filtering can be customized so. The ability to customize the filtering per policy set or by policy group can assist in controlling access to unsafe web pages and downloads that could threaten your business. Protection against employee Internet behavior is a critical step in enforcing your Internet Policy.

Through a unique partnership we are happy to provide Webroot Web Security which has been providing Web filtering for many schools, libraries, government agencies, and enterprise businesses of all sizes since 1997. Webroot provides easier manageability, better malware protection, web usage reporting, and much more dependability than on-premise solutions. Organizations can get the most advanced protection against web based malware, viruses, spy ware, phishing and data loss while easily enforcing Internet acceptable use policy—all without the hassle of purchasing and managing additional hardware and software.

April Newsletter
Ping Tool – A tool to help you diagnose Inbound or Outbound problems.

From all of us at MxToolBox, thank you for your business and your time.


What does the Bounce Message – “Unable to Relay” Mean?

If your customers are receiving an error message like below, there are 2 settings that may need to be adjusted.

‘name@domain.com’ on 9/15/2006 11:11 AM
550 5.7.1 Unable to relay for name@domain.com

Configure your Exchange Server to accept mail anonymously for your domain

The directions below are for Exchange 2007, but most mail servers should have similar settings.
  1. Please confirm that your Send Connector has Anonymous Users allowed under Permission Groups.
  2. Open your Exchange Management Console and access Server Configuration > Hub Transport > Receive Connectors

  3. Right Click on the Default (or any other Receive Connector your company uses) and choose Properties.
  4. Select the Permission Groups tab and ensure that Anonymous Users is checked.

    NOTE: This does NOT allow anonymous users to send mail through your server, this would configure the server as an Open Relay; that would be bad. This allows anonymous users to  have access to the Receive Connector so they can send mail addressed to your domain(s).
Configure your Email Client to authenticate when it connects to your SMTP server
To resolve this issue please adjust their email client to require ‘My Outgoing Server SMTP Requires Authentication’. The directions below are for Outlook 2007, but most mail clients should have similar settings.
  1. Open Outlook
  2. Go to Tools > Email Account > Change
  3. Click More Settings > Select Outgoing Server tab and ensure that check box next to My Outgoing Server SMTP Requires authentication is enabled.
  4. Click Ok and Next and Finish.