ExchangeDefender for Service Providers (Video)
Earlier last week we completed the beta of ExchangeDefender for Service Providers and many of our partners have been working on customizing their portals and adding new accounts. So far the feedback has been awesome, we’ve gotten a lot of suggestions for the product enhancement that we’ll be announcing soon. I (Vlad Mazek) have unfortunately been under the weather for the past week so I have not had a chance to share with you just what these new Service Provider features bring. Allow me to do so now, here is a demo video in Flash or Windows Media format:
Check out these videos demonstrating ExchangeDefender SP:
These new admin panel interfaces present our first sign of committment to the service provider partnerships we have formed over the years in that we’re allowing you to completely rebrand the service to match your corporate identity. We are actively seeking feedback on additional reporting and auditing requirements so we may add more intelligence to how you manage your customers SMTP security. We cannot repeat this enough: we are out to create the most comprehensive SMTP security solution without the traditional complexity these systems, including ExchangeDefender, have had in the past. Talk to you soon at our next partner conference call!
-Vlad Mazek, MCSE
CEO, Own Web Now Corp, CEO
ExchangeDefender v3 Released – Video Tour & Guide
ExchangeDefender v3 has replaced the old ExchangeDefender v2. This release is a big source of pride for us is that the interface guidance was given by actual ExchangeDefender users who wanted to be more efficient as they go through the mail. We’ve managed to simplify the interface even further to really make security management as seamless as possible.
Don’t believe me? Check out this video: ExchangeDefender v3 Video Tour (5 minutes)
Once you’re done watching the video, get the guide/manual. You won’t need it, ExchangeDefender v3 is way too easy to use but some people like to hold paper and we understand.
Thanks to all that made this release possible, in particular three folks outside OWN that worked very hard to bring you this thing: Rich Walkup, Judy Schmidt and Pablo Averbuj. It is absolutely amazing when your own customers take the time to improve the product because they like what it does and want it to work better: and to that end thanks to all the customers for all the feedback, guidance and testing. Thank you for helping us get to this point.
What’s next? Well, MSP stuff this week, agents hit next week, Live Archive feature (which is absolutely revolutionize how you think about SMB messaging continuity) and more all coming online over the course of the next month or so. The goal behind ExchangeDefender v3 is ambitious – we aim to be the most feature-packed easy-to-use, over-hyphenated mail security service out there!
ExchangeDefender for MSPs Conf Call
First of all thank you all for testing ExchangeDefender v3. We have received a ton of feedback which we look forward to integrating into the product very rapidly. After all, that is why we took such a long time to redesign the service – to make it more responsive to both security and business needs.
Tomorrow (Thursday, March 22, 2007) the new ExchangeDefender v3 interface will become the default interface for all ExchangeDefender users, administrators and managers. Attached is a PDF guide that you are welcome to distribute to your users and system administrators. If you would like to brand it you are more than welcome to download the Microsoft Word 2007 document from here and apply your own themes and branding:
PDF: http://www.ownwebnow.com/downloads/ExchangeDefender-v3-Guide.pdf
Word: http://www.ownwebnow.com/downloads/ExchangeDefenderGuide.docx
Additionally, we have two conference calls this week targeted specifically at our resellers, MSPs and system administrators. Even though ExchangeDefender is easily the most widely used SMTP security software for managed service providers, the v2 version of it was not very MSP friendly. As a result ExchangeDefender v3 was designed from the ground up with MSP plugs and APIs. I would like to invite you to the two conference calls I will be holding this week to both invite you to our MSP beta control panels (official launch March 30th) and discuss just where we are heading with MSPs in the coming year. These calls are happening tomorrow and Friday, to register please go here:
Registration URL:
http://www.ownwebnow.com/launch.asp
Event 1: Thursday, Mar 22 — 23:00 – 24:00 GMT (4PM – 5PM PST, 7PM – 8PM EST)
Event 2: Friday, Mar 23 — 14:00 – 15:00 GMT (9AM – 10AM EST)
I hope to see you there. Both events are optional and represent our efforts to work closer with our partners and provide the information and support you have asked for. V3 is just the first step.
ExchangeDefender v3 Goes Live at http://v3.exchangedefender.com
Better late than never; I know I told you to expect this last week but it took us several days to think up a clever URL:
ExchangeDefender v3:
The site functions and looks very much like the current v2. There are more features, certain features actually work and the entire framework integrates into the overhaul that ExchangeDefender went through in the November – January timeframe. Please pardon the caps:
THIS SITE USES LIVE DATA.
The purpose of the site is to give you an idea of the new look, new features, new direction we are taking with the product. I hope you can take a moment to take a look at the site, tell us what you like, what you don’t like, and what you want more of. We have rewritten much of the stuff from scratch to provide for realtime updates across our global network and that will allow us to provide applications that both users, administrators and managed service providers are asking for.
The official and only place to ask questions and provide v3 feedback are the Own Web Now forums; To register for the forums please go to: http://www.ownwebnow.com/forums and click on register. Email support@ownwebnow.com the username you selected during the registration and they will approve you.
The code is live, working and functional. We expect this to replace the current control panels by the middle of next week. Expect emails from me with documentation, kb site, videos, and so on over the next week or so.
Conference Day
Remember that today is the big ExchangeDefender v3 Conference Day. We’ll have four phone conference sessions for partners and customers to ask questions and provide feedback on what you’d like to see ExchangeDefender. We’ll be sharing our roadmap for the next year and the new direction that ExchangeDefender will be going in.
Event 2: 14:00 – 15:00 GMT (9AM – 10AM EST)
Event 3: 17:00 – 18:00 GMT (Noon – 1PM EST)
Event 4: 23:00 – 24:00 GMT (4PM – 5PM PST, 7PM – 8PM EST)
Event 1: 6:00 – 7:00 GMT (1AM – 2AM EST), Wednesday, March 7th
You should have received an invitation along with the conference phone numbers and access codes. If you have not received an invitation please contact us directly for access.
Update on the v3 announcement by tomorrow after we discuss it with our partners and customers.
ExchangeDefender v3 UI Update
ExchangeDefender v3 UI Update got rolled earlier this week and we’re still working out some of the issues with the layout and the way information is presented. Overall the system is stable and we’re working on the documentation side of things at the moment. I believe we’re just a few days away from a public availability so please stay tuned.
Own Web Now Forums
We’re quite happy to announce the launch of Own Web Now forums. With the launch of ExchangeDefender v3 we wanted to form a closer relationship with our partners and clients – depending on how folks take to the forums we will expand them to provide support and discussion of our other products.
If you have a suggestion for features to be included with ExchangeDefender v3 please sign up for the forums:
http://www.ownwebnow.com/forum
If it would make it easier to follow via RSS you can subscribe to it here.
Please disable IMF
We have been fielding numerous reports from customers complaining that their email has simply disappeared over the last few days. Either mail sent directly to them, or quarantine reports or anything suspicious.
Over the past two days we have been able to identify two causes of this on target Windows 2003 servers running Trend Micro or IMF. As you may be aware, Exchange team had a brief pause in IMF updates (few weeks) and the most recent update that was pushed out is far more aggressive than the previous ones. It is likely that if you do have IMF installed it is either archiving or deleting messages. In Trend’s case, messages are simply disappearing.
To identify if this issue is affecting you please turn on message tracking and try to search for messages you know you should have received. You will likely see “Message sent to categorizer” at which point there is no further information on the message. With IMF you will see a report by IMF indicating that the message was either deleted or archived by IMF.
These issues are totally unrelated to ExchangeDefender but they will impact the performance of clients that use both for protection. As always, please uninstall/remove/disable mail hygene products to troubleshoot the core of the problem. We have facilities to help you find out if ExchangeDefender is at fault, if you suspect it please call (877) 546–0316
ExchangeDefender v3 Announcement
Dear ExchangeDefender User, Partner, Friend:
Today marks the completion of all the changes and improvements we have been making to the core infrastructure of ExchangeDefender. Thank you so much for putting up with us over the past three months as we’ve virtually rewritten what ExchangeDefender is and how it works. Over the next 30 days we will be enabling all these features will become manageable – we need your feedback. Your patience and your loyalty will not go without notice, if you scroll down you’ll see we’re giving a very nice present to all of our customers and partners.
The purpose of this email is to inform you of the changes to ExchangeDefender and how they will be implemented over the next 30 days. These improvements fit into four categories and were made 100% based on user and partner feedback: user experience, administrative functionality, centralized (MSP) control and core infrastructure.
User Experience
The user experience of ExchangeDefender will be changing only slightly because we do recognize how sensitive non-IT users are to interface changes. The behavior, location and use of ExchangeDefender will not change to the point that they will require re-training.
– Whitelists, policies and trusts are now implemented in realtime via SQL
– Ability to reassign quarantine management to another user
– Ability to request a resend of daily report
– Ability to search the quarantine
– Ability to mark reviewed messages so only unread counts show
– Ability to receive multiple daily reports
– Ability to adjust the time zone so the times in quarantines and reports reflect users local region
– Ability to mass-release multiple messages from the quarantine
– Ability to view messages over the past 7 days in the Live Quarantine even if the Exchange server is down
– Paging support to limit the number of messages shown on the screen
Administrative Functionality
Administrative functionality will allow the domain administrator to designate a “SPAM Czar” who can be in charge of reviewing the organizations quarantines. Administrator will also have access to make all the changes necessary in realtime. Additionally, the administrator will be:
– Able to add users from the ExchangeDefender control panel
– Resend welcome/activation messages
– Reset passwords, policies, settings for a particular user
– Access all quarantines, messages, archives for a particular user
– Test delivery with internal, external and remote facilities to help troubleshoot mail delivery times
– Ability to establish file level attachment policy settings (still no .exe’s sorry; but you can rename them)
– Statistical breakdown of daily attack profiles and SPAM counts
– Ability to audit outgoing mail and enforce outbound policies
Centralized (MSP) Control
Perhaps the most demanded feature set by a long shot. ExchangeDefender was not originally designed to be reseller friendly, it was designed to protect users from exploits and time consuming SPAM on our own servers. As the product has grown so has its reseller base and we’re providing the management interface you’ve asked us for:
– Ability to self-provision accounts by providing domain, ip, policies and user dumps
– Ability to consolidate entire ExchangeDefender network management under one screen
– Ability to receive realtime billing, user count and statistical breakdowns
– Ability to access any information available for every other screen (user & administrator)
– Ability to provide executive reports
– Ability to retrieve data in realtime for internal reporting systems (web service for Kaseya, LPI, Connectwise integration)
– Branding support for the portal, daily report emails and activation messages.
Core Infrastructure & Training
The most significant changes to the core infrastructure is the way we manage, deploy and support the network. In the past ExchangeDefender nodes had local configuration databases that were generated on-the-fly and loaded at preset intervals. The new ExchangeDefender v3 setup is directly driven by a SQL database and all policies, settings and services are driven by a distributed database.
The most significant improvement is the addition of Live Archive. The live archive gives your users the ability to access their email through a web based interface hosted at Own Web Now Corp – even while the target mail server may be down. This radically transforms ExchangeDefender from a protection system to a business continuity tool. The messages are spooled both on the ExchangeDefender node and a Live Archive system. This way if the server goes down your users will be able to access mail through a secure (and highly auditable) webmail client and the original message will still sit in the queue waiting for delivery to the target mail server. When that mail server does come up the messages will be delivered but your users would have had the option of continuing to write, read and respond to email while you were down preserving company identity and communication channel.
The best part of this is that even though the pricing for ExchangeDefender will be changing, our current active partners will get this feature free of charge and will be grandfathered at the current pricing model even for the future clients that are added to the service.
Changes
All of these changes are influenced by our partners and end users. As such, we want to make sure that we have taken your feedback in account properly and that the changes are implemented in a manner that is most beneficial to our users. As such, we will be deploying one feature at a time, allowing you to use it for a few days, taking feedback and adjusting the behavior and look of the system for everyone’s benefit. Later tonight you will receive an invitation to participate in the design of ExchangeDefender v3, we welcome your feedback. We expect the entire deployment to be complete in less than 30 days as 99% of the code is already written, we just want to make sure it does what you need it to do.
Additionally, we will be investing in the training resources for ExchangeDefender. While half of the security can easily be done by ExchangeDefender alone, the other half consists of properly training the user and the administrator. We will be releasing series of white papers and web video lessons that will help people get started with ExchangeDefender. This will help free you time and make ExchangeDefender deployments less stressful.
In closing, ExchangeDefender v3 is a drastically different product from v2. It is perhaps the most ambitious effort to provide SMB with a reliable and distributed communication system that leaves the end user in control while providing the security blanket of a large network. I thank you for all your patience with us, thank you for all your money, and hope we continue to deliver the services you’ve come to expect from us.
Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek, MCSE
Changes to Whitelist and Blacklist Functionality
Yesterday (~10PM GMT) we rolled out our new whitelist and blacklist functionality. The new functions allow ExchangeDefender to apply whitelist rules in realtime and minimize the chances of a false positive.
While the entire ExchangeDefender network is SQL driven much of the functionality was not transaction based – we simply regenerated node configuration via SQL which allowed for quick provisioning and central management. Unfortunately, with as large and as diverse of a network as we operate, that also introduced latency in rule updates and gave us a hard time troubleshooting.
So what’s changed? Well, every time you send an email somewhere it is temporarily stored in a SQL database as a reverse whitelist entry. What this means is that we automatically whitelist the people you send mail to. When they respond, they will get through without being put through the extensive SPAM filtering process ExchangeDefender uses. And because the process is SQL driven that recipient is “trusted” in near realtime.
I hope you like this feature.
Note: It took a better part of overnight to switch over to the new process. As result, some previously trusted messages (ie: Yahoo Groups) that are on several blacklists would have ended up in your SPAM quarantine. Our global trusts for our partners (Yahoo, AOL, MSN, Hotmail) were programmed in overnight so all should be well now. If its not, please email support@ownwebnow.com and we’ll address it immediately.