Help, configuration and tips.

Tutorial: Important Security Considerations
This page contains useful information on how to ensure your mail server remains secure and how to help protect your users from viruses.

SPAM, SMTP Security and Preventing Open Relays
With new laws being passed in the USA and other countries, SPAM is gradually changing from being just annoying to becoming illegal. Any mail server administrator must ensure that their system is secure and safe from being the spring board for SPAM mails. Ability Mail Server has several features which enable the mail server to be locked down and secured against such threats.

What is SPAM?
It is basically unsolicited mail which arrives in your Inbox and can often contain offensive contents, crude promises and generally costs the Internet community millions every year. Only a few years ago, email marketing was seen as a low cost and very effective marketing tool but in reality it turned out to be something quite different. Today, SPAM is seen as one of the largest problems on the Internet, second only to viruses.

Why Must I Be Concerned with SPAM?
If you're careful and usually just lucky, you may not receive much SPAM at all. However, your mail server will be of a great interest to a variety of SPAM agents. If your mail server is not secured correctly and is found by to be an open relay by a SPAM agent, your mail server will quickly become responsible for the delivery of thousands of SPAM mails. Although this may not directly affect you, each mail you relay is most likely illegal and you could result in huge fines. Although it is unlikely to result in such a way, your IP will probably be black listed by SPAM prevention systems and your mail sending capability will be vastly damaged.

How Can I Secure My Mail Server?
The answer is simple: enable SMTP Authentication. This is the most basic but the most secure method of protection and will lock down your mail server to only those who can provide a valid username and password. Ability Mail Server also supports the ability to separate your Incoming SMTP and Outgoing SMTP onto different ports, adding further protection. Ability Mail Server also allows you to restrict access to the Outgoing SMTP to certain ranges of IP's. We recommend that you take advantage of these security facilities and ensure your mail server stays secure and safe.

Preventing Email Viruses
Currently the largest threat to the Internet community is the ability of viruses to spread by email. With security exploits discovered in the most popular mail clients, dangerous attachments may automatically execute and infect your computer before you can even delete the mail. Only recently, email viruses have become headline news again and have been responsible for millions of dollars of damage. It is important that you are protected against such threats, and Ability Mail Server has the technology to achieve this.

Virus Protection
Although simple to use, our virus blocking technology will ensure that any mail containing a potentially dangerous attachment is blocked. If enabled, the attachment blocking system scans every mail and detects dangerous attachments. If one is discovered, the software then immediately destroys the entire mail and if configured to do so, will send a failure notice to both the intended recipient and the sender. This protection is the ultimate and safe guards against the oldest and the newest viruses. Virus scanning software can only usually detect known viruses, our software protects against all.

Secure Streamlining
Ability Mail Server contains many advanced features which are intended to make the software flexible. However, in a lot of cases, some are not required. We recommend that to ensure security is at its best, you disable services which are not used (eg. if you don't use IMAP4 then disable it). With fewer services running, there are less portals for hackers to attempt a break in. This does not only apply to our mail server though, other services such as web servers, ftp servers, windows file sharing and others can also be streamlined. If your computer is just a mail server, then that is all that is required.

Firewalls
As well as limiting the services that you run on your server, it is also a good idea to use a firewall to restrict access to only the ports that your require. This way you can be sure that there are no ports accessible through flaws in Windows or other software. You should always build your security by building a 'brick wall' (firewall) around your server then letting through just the bits you want as and when they're needed.