Think, Change, Implement

Just as people repeat old sayings or theories every day without giving them much thought, people often apply ideas to their business, which they have failed to give enough critical thought to.

There have been countless times when I have heard people say “We have always done it like this” as a way to justify why they do what they do.  Now, if you have always done something a certain way, because you have looked for better ways to do it, and failed, that’s fine.  But, to keep on doing something ONLY because of familiarity, makes very little marketing sense. Tell me this, if you continue to do what you have always done how can you expect there to be different results? Change is necessary and vital for “successful marketing”. Leveraging your marketing efforts is a GREAT way for you to change up some things. Effective marketing can be used a tool to reach your customers. It is always important to advertise or market your products and services in a way that is appealing to them.

It is in the best interest of all parties to regularly review the processes within your business and in your marketing efforts.  In fact, it’s hard to make meaningful, ongoing progress, without constantly seeking to improve what you do and what your clients want.

How can we help?

Since we have recently added a few new services to our product offerings we are revamping the marketing materials that we brand and provide free of charge to all of our partners. This is something that we are changing so that you can implement them into your marketing strategies to better help you with your clients. Stay tuned to the Marketing Collateral page of our website for new downloadable templates to brand. All of the Product Guides are now updated and as always if you wish to have some collateral branded please feel free to fill out the form on that page and I will send you new collateral branded just for you with your brand, your logo, and your color scheme within 24 hours!

Stephanie Hasenour
VP Marketing, ExchangeDefender
stephanie@ownwebnow.com

Action Cannot Be Completed. Name Cannot Be Resolved.

Every week we get at least 5-10 support tickets created by partners who receive the error “Action cannot be completed. Name cannot be resolved.” A lot of the times partners may be setting up an additional mailbox for a user, but sometimes it can happen when resetting up the users profile. In this blog I hope to provide some insight on why this occurs.

First and foremost, if you do not receive a credential window prompt then you either have a credential conflict or an invalid outlook configuration. I would like to make it very clear…you should always, always see the credential window.

When you hit “Check Name”, Outlook does a user lookup to resolve the input username to a mailbox. Outlook will first attempt to use the users local credentials to authenticate, then any cached credentials (Windows Credential Manager), finally, if no credential entries authenticate then Outlook will prompt the user for credentials.

If a user does not receive the credential prompt and receives the error “Action cannot be completed” a quick fix is to go to More Settings, Security, and then enable the checkbox to “Always prompt for logon credentials.”

When user’s select “Remember my credentials” Outlook then creates a cached credential for windows in the credential manager

Normally, this works as expected.. the next time Outlook launches it will try the cached credential which would authenticate.

But imagine if you were trying to add a second mailbox to the users profile (Let’s say the CEO has two mailboxes for ‘two different companies’) .. how is Outlook to know that the cached credential for servertest@louie.exchangedefender.com on “cas.louie.exchangedefender.com” isn’t for the second mailbox (Let’s say servertest2@louie.exchangedefender.com)? The answer is..Outlook won’t be able to tell the difference.. The server will respond to Outlook with the message “Access denied” because the cached credentials for mailbox1 does not have permission to access mailbox2 (Think of it as trying to access mailbox2 via OWA, but using the credentials for mailbox1) and then receives the error “Action cannot be completed. Name cannot be resolved” when trying to resolve the mailbox name for mailbox2..the key point is that this failure will instantly occur and there will be no prompt for the user to provide credentials because the error “Access denied” mean “You have a valid account here, but it does not have access to this resource”.

Now let us imagine the inverse where a user gets prompted for credentials every time no matter how many times they select “Remember my credentials” or if they follow our help article “My Windows OS won’t hold the Outlook authentication info!” and manually add “*.exchangedefender.com” to the credential manager.. This is because Outlook is passing off a valid “Account” that has access to the resource (Mailbox), however, the credentials being passed off are incorrect. If Outlook tries to authenticate with invalid credentials the server will respond back with “Invalid credentials”..notice how this isn’t the same error as “Access Denied” which is why Outlook will then prompt the user for credentials. To solve this we tell users to delete all references to any exchangedefender servers in credential manager and then manually add the credentials (following the above blog post) and then adding *.exchangedefender.com to the “Local Intranet” zone in Internet Explorer. This should allow Outlook to trust our servers to hand off the credentials.

Finally, the last common scenario for the two failures (either no credential prompt or reoccurring credential prompts) is if the local users login name matches a username on the server. Remember, Outlook will first try the local logged on users credentials. Now imagine if my local login name was servertest@louie.exchangedefender.com… then any time I attempted to add an Outlook profile I would either instantly authenticate or I would always get the credential prompt. Can you guess why? Its because either the local users credentials (Either their local computer user name or an active directory account) match the servers credentials.

Active Directory:

     · Username: servertest@louie.exchangedefender.com

     · NT Username: servertest

     · Password: 123456

Exchange:

    · Username: servertest@louie.exchangedefender.com

    · NT Username: servertest

    · Password: abcdefg

In the above, the server would always prompt for login credentials because the credentials are mismatched. But let’s think back to our first example of adding the users second mailbox to their profile and imagine we had the same credential conflict as above, except the exchange user is servertest2… Outlook would again instantly fail because the local login credentials does match an exchange account, but does not have access to the resource (The second mailbox, servertest2).

In the case of opening multiple mailboxes in one profile the only way to get Outlook to not prompt for credentials for each mailbox is to grant full access permission from one user to another…so if you cached the credentials for one mailbox (ie., servertest) and then granted servertest full access credentials to servertest2 (second mailbox) then outlook wouldn’t receive the “Access Denied” error when trying to access servertest2 with the cached credentials of servertest.

Travis Sheldon
VP, Network Operations, ExchangeDefender
(877) 546-0316 x757
travis@ownwebnow.com

Compliance Archiving FAQ

Our compliance product has been growing quickly of late and as the volume grows you start seeing common questions come up in mass.

I’ll take this opportunity to address the most common ones that we’ve seen come up.

I. When setting up and on premise (meaning not hosted with us) Exchange server for compliance. When you’re setting up the Journal mailbox, you have to be very careful in Active Directory. Please make sure to set the account to:

       a. Not allow the password changes

       b. Password never expires

Remember if we can’t access the journal mailbox, we can’t archive your data. But don’t worry if you did this, the journal information will be intact so you wont be out of compliance but obviously you will just fall behind, but it will catch up.

II. How do I access my archive https://compliancearchive.exchangedefender.com is not showing my customers?!

After the .com append ?spid=YOURSPID

We hope these tips make the experience a little smooth, remember share this stuff with your techs!

Carlos Lascano
VP Support Services, ExchangeDefender
carlos@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x737

Selling Confidence

In sales, there are many techniques that people use to make a sale. There have been countless books on the subject of sales, and there are many takes on what is required to become a great salesperson. Though all of these techniques have their place, there is not a single more important aspect in my opinion to the process of a sale, than the ability to portray confidence.

The words “portray confidence” however really do not paint the right picture. Confidence whether it is in yourself, your product, your service, or solution is the wholehearted belief that what you do, what you are, and what you bring are absolutely, without a question, the right thing for your client. This may be a difficult concept for some, especially technically minded individuals to get behind.

The technically minded person will constantly question every aspect of a solution. This is rightfully so, as it is built into their psyche the need to know every aspect, the pros, the cons, and everything in between. This same need for knowledge can sometimes break down the confidence level presented to a potential client and can make sales more difficult for the technical person.

Considering that most IT professionals started their businesses from a technical background, this simple understanding is the key to unlocking sales. Technically minded individuals must be able to believe in themselves, their product, and their solution and be passionate about those things.

Most people have an outside passion. This may be sports, a hobby, or even a favorite brand. Think of something that you are so confident in and passionate about that you would never lose an argument on that subject. Apply this same type of passion and confidence to your product, service, or solution. It is important to get excited and to feel real passion and emotion. If you can unlock this same feeling you will surely portray confidence, and confidence equates to more sales. 

Frank Gurnee
VP, Channel Services, ExchangeDefender
(877) 546-0316 x4777
frank@ownwebnow.com

ExchangeDefender Corporate Encryption

Introducing ExchangeDefender Corporate Encryption! Corporate Encryption is another new addition to the ExchangeDefender Suite!

Corporate Encryption is not replacing the Encryption piece that is already included in the full ExchangeDefender Suite; it is a separate feature that is simply adding a whole new level of protection and control. ExchangeDefender Corporate Encryption provides an easy and seamless way for organizations of all sizes to implement content protection and comprehensive control over information being sent through email.

Highlights

– Pattern-Based Encryption – Pattern Matching can detect patterns inside of outbound email and attachments and categorize them as credit card numbers, social security numbers, dates of birth or other company-specific account numbers. Each pattern can be assigned an automatic action to be taken once the message with protected content is detected.

– Comprehensive Reporting – ExchangeDefender Corporate Encryption delivers sophisticated reporting both on the activity of the users and the compliance officer. You can see at a glance which content is protected as well as which messages have triggered compliance and encryption activity. By reviewing this information you can be assured that any suspicious activity is quickly addressed and that you can respond to inquiries about your regulatory compliance on demand.

– Corporate Encryption Mechanisms – Pattern detection and lexicons provide only for the piece of the encryption puzzle – automating response to potential loss of corporate data is crucial to operational efficiency. Emails that contain sensitive information can be encrypted and sent to the recipient with the username and a password or can be simply emailed with a link to the encrypted message. For additional security, messages can also be forwarded transparently to the Corporate Compliance Officer (CO) who can review the message and then allow it to be sent or block it outright.

– Lexicon Dictionaries – Enables organizations to provide entire dictionaries of words that could indicate data leakage. For example, financial companies working in investments may want to intercept messages that contain words “Guaranteed Investment Returns” or “Insider Information” and assign an appropriate action to meet regulatory compliance.

How It Works…

Corporate Encryption is very easy to promote and it is also extremely easy to add to your solutions set and offer because there are so many benefits associated with using it. When talking with clients the key points to get across is that you understand the needs of their business and their pain points.  Also, let your prospects know that you have the product that can provide a solution. Another great thing to point out about Corporate Encryption is the ability to have more control. You can better monitor your network and be aware of things that are going on. You can define keywords and patterns, so that when certain things that you are concerned about happen you will know about them and be alerted. There are also legal and HR benefits of protecting both company data and employees and prevent important data from being leaked or sent out. Corporate Encryption is also compliant with SOX, HIPAA, SEC and local government requirements to provide you with more protection and powerful auditing.

ExchangeDefender Corporate Encryption is only available with the full version of ExchangeDefender and our Exchange + SharePoint offering; it is not available with our Essentials services.  Corporate Encryption is available for just $0.99/user/month and there are no contracts and no commitments.

For more information, visit the ExchangeDefender Corporate Encryption page on our website, or feel free to give us a call!

Stephanie Hasenour
VP Marketing, ExchangeDefender
stephanie@ownwebnow.com

The Easiest Way to Market ExchangeDefender Solutions

If you are like most MSP or IT solution companies, day to day business can often times get in the way of all of the things you would like to do in a given day? In this, sales and marketing efforts can be put on the back burner and operations can take the brunt of, or the majority of work needed to stay operational. Not many IT companies have dedicated sales and marketing staff, which can sometimes keep the business from reaching its next level goals.

One of the advantages to working with forward thinking vendors like ExchangeDefender is getting the opportunity to utilize provided, proven marketing materials, documentation, and expertise from dedicated marketing staff. This allows your business to get the essentials needed to grow the business without having to find resources or utilize hard earned revenues.

ExchangeDefender partners get access to a wealth of information and knowledge to brand and market their solutions. A quick visit to the marketing link at the ExchangeDefender website provides brandable materials from flyers and brochures, to Postcards and Mailers, to product specific cut sheets giving you access to all of the information needed to begin a marketing campaign, no matter how large or small.

The benefit to being a partner doesn’t end with just materials. The marketing staff will even dedicate resources to help you brand the documentation for your business. By filling out the simple form at the bottom of the site and uploading your logo, the ExchangeDefender marketing team will get to work for you custom branding requested materials and returning them to your business, usually within 24 hours.

By keeping your clients informed, creating recurring marketing campaigns, and providing branded documentation and materials, you will be well on your way to reaching your business goals. By utilizing the resources you have available and allowing the ExchangeDefender marketing team to lend a helping hand, you can be assured to keep revenues in your pocket and add additional revenues to the bottom line.

Frank Gurnee
VP, Channel Services, ExchangeDefender
(877) 546-0316 x4777
frank@ownwebnow.com

LOUIE LOUIE LOUIE LOOUUIIIEEEE

Over the past week we’ve had some reports about random slowness seen by users on LOUIE. So far this has been only reported by a handful of partners totaling less than 2% of the total user base on LOUIE. The reports from users included slow email delivery, OWA time outs and random errors in OWA. Unfortunately there was no common link between the reports (ISP, firewalls, etc.) which required us to do a bit of in-depth debugging. During our tracing we were able to log that timeouts appeared to be occurring during GC lookups by LOUIEMBOX1 when delivering mail or responding back to CAS servers with mailbox data. To rectify the issue we’ve increased the resources available to the domain controllers and we will be monitoring connections throughout the day.

Travis Sheldon
VP, Network Operations, ExchangeDefender
(877) 546-0316 x757
travis@ownwebnow.com

ExchangeDefender LocalCloud

The newest addition to the ExchangeDefender Suite is ExchangeDefender LocalCloud!

LocalCloud is gaining more and more interest every day! Thousands of our ExchangeDefender partners have already rolled out LocalCloud! If you have not yet heard of ExchangeDefender LocalCloud be sure to read this post or click here for more information ExchangeDefender LocalCloud.

ExchangeDefender LocalCloud is a completely cloud-based file storage platform that provides multi-device sync, geographical redundancy and local storage. The ExchangeDefender LocalCloud system syncs across any device that has an agent loaded onto it and allows users to have access to files on every device no matter where they are, whether in the office, at home, etc.

How Does It Work?

ExchangeDefender LocalCloud utilizes local caching on each machine which means users are not tied to an internet connection to access any of their data. LocalCloud provides an exciting, new, local file sync feature, which allows clients to leverage the cloud service to synchronize documents across multiple PCs, while only accessing the cloud to sync information changes. This allows users to access their files and make modifications quickly, without waiting for files to download. By removing the need to manage files “in the cloud” with a limited functionality editor, ExchangeDefender LocalCloud is able to eliminate the problem which has plagued many other competitors. Data integrity, backup, and redundancy is also completely handled; by replicating data across multiple, secure data centers, LocalCloud provides a robust solution and adds an additional layer of security, with full access to all logs and security controls.

LocalCloud Highlights

· Geographically Redundant Storage

· Enterprise Hardware

· Easy & Seamless

· Keeps Your Business in Sync

· Encrypted Storage & Encrypted Transfer

· Audit Logs & Access

· Support Included!!!

The only way you can use LocalCloud is with the full suite of ExchangeDefender. LocalCloud is currently available for FREE! With LocalCloud you get up to 1GB of storage included free of charge with ExchangeDefender. Once you enable LocalCloud all your users will have their FREE 1GB allocation ready to use. The only limitation is that you cannot pool the space. You can also upgrade your storage space if you need to. The process is outlined in the LocalCloud Installation Guide,  and pricing is defined in the Partner Guide.

With the successful launch of LocalCloud we are going to continue to make LocalCloud better and better. We have gotten a lot of feedback and feature requests for LocalCloud and know that it is capable of becoming an even more beneficial product to help you to become more profitable. Progressively, throughout the fourth quarter of this year we will be rolling out LocalCloud 2.0.

LocalCloud 2.0 will have more functionality when it comes to sharing folders with others so that multiple people can work on files. There will also be alerts sent out to users and groups when files are used, more detailed tracking and logs, and LocalCloud 2.0 will also have a Mac OS X client.

How to Order LocalCloud

As long as you have ExchangeDefender you have already have LocalCloud, you just need to enable it! Go to https://admin.exchangedefender.com and enable LocalCloud. If your business needs call for more storage space just go through the simple ordering process within the ExchangeDefender Support Portal in the Service Manager http://support.ownwebnow.com and click on LocalCloud.

For more information you can view the Installation Guide, How LocalCloud Works page, or feel free to give us call, (877) 546-0316 and ask us about LocalCloud.

Stephanie Hasenour
VP Marketing, ExchangeDefender
stephanie@ownwebnow.com