Something old, new, borrowed, and blue!
As the throwback to the Victorian era implies, ExchangeDefender looks forward to providing your protection and prosperity. From September to November of 2023 we will be launching a ton of new features and we want to invite you to a webinar that will explain all the details you need to know:
The pricing will not change but you’ll get many new features and security settings.
We are responding to the demands and problems our clients face every day exchanging information across the Internet securely.
What worked a decade or two ago, heck even a week or two ago in some cases, is no longer adequate. That’s what you pay us for and the primary value we provide – keeping new exploits and attacks on your technology away from your server/cloud/tenant.
To get the same level of protection and monitoring you’d need a dedicated cybersecurity team for even the smallest of organizations – and we’re taking big steps to simplify that process and give you the ability to control your security without having to deal with every little detail.
We’re excited and hope you get a chance to join us for this webinar – we promise it will save you a ton of time and get you ahead of what will be a very busy quarter.
Trusted sender keeps on ending up in SPAM
One of the most common complaints we get from our clients has to do with allow/whitelist policies and to make the long story short this happens because of the way your service provider configured ExchangeDefender. The long story, technical background, and best practices are outlined at https://www.exchangedefender.com/docs/whitelist. It usually sounds like this:
“I keep whitelisting this email address that sends me my OTP password / password reminder / login code / transaction confirmation / newsletter and they keep on ending up in SPAM!”
This happens for clients that configure ExchangeDefender to block email forgeries and spoofing.
You see, the email address that is showing up in ExchangeDefender and your Outlook/Gmail is not the actual email address that the message was sent from. Large volume emails (OTP, password reminders, notifications) are not sent by humans, they are computer generated and there is a random email address for every notification they sent out (so when/if it bounces they can track it).
These automated email addresses tend to have a long randomly generated identifier in them and generally look like this:
010001890676a389-ee862f60-d7ea-4ba1-a113-f16935e2afeb-000000@amazonses.com
But in your Outlook/Gmail the spoofed/faked email appears to have come from DoNotReply@someotpsite.cz which has the domain you trust and attempt to allow/whitelist. If you pull up the SMTP headers from the quarantined email you can see this email address in the envelope-from field:
Received: from inbound10.exchangedefender.com (65.99.255.114) by
owa.exchangedefenderdemo.com (10.10.10.5) with Microsoft SMTP Server (TLS) id 14.3.498.0;
Thu, 29 Jun 2023 05:23:03 -0400
Received-SPF: pass (inbound10.exchangedefender.com: domain of 010001890675c389-ee862f60-d7ea-4ba1-a113-f16935e2afeb-000000@amazonses.com designates 54.240.77.69 as permitted sender) receiver=inbound10.exchangedefender.com; client-ip=54.240.77.69; helo=a77-69.smtp-out.amazonses.com; envelope-from=010001890676a389-ee862f60-d7ea-4ba1-a113-f16935e2afeb-000000@amazonses.com; x-software=ExchangeDefender SPF;
Authentication-Results: inbound10.exchangedefender.com; dmarc=pass (p=quarantine dis=none) header.from=someotpsite.cz
Authentication-Results: inbound10.exchangedefender.com;
dkim=pass (1024-bit key) header.d=someotpsite.cz header.i=@someotpsite.cz header.b=”QPv3HP79″;
dkim=pass (1024-bit key) header.d=amazonses.com header.i=@amazonses.com header.b=”MsX8RGl7″
Received: from a77-69.smtp-out.amazonses.com (a77-69.smtp-out.amazonses.com
[54.240.77.69]) by inbound10.exchangedefender.com (8.14.7/8.14.7) with ESMTP
id 35T9M86a030204
<demo@exchangedefenderdemo.com>; Thu, 29 Jun 2023 05:22:09 -0400
From: <DoNotReply@someotpsite.cz>
To: <demo@exchangedefenderdemo.com>
Subject: ConnectWise Manage Security Code
…
Solving this issue requires your ExchangeDefender admin to decide how permissive they want to be of email forgeries and fakes. ExchangeDefender provides two ways to manage this in the ExchangeDefender Domain Admin app at https://admin.exchangedefender.com (see documentation)
Option 1: Allow email from the bulk email network
ExchangeDefender enables you to automatically pass through messages coming from specific bulk/spam mail providers. It’s located at https://admin.exchangedefender.com under Advanced Features > Bulk Mailer Policy:
In our example SMTP header the message came from AmazonSES so if you change the policy from Scan to Allow, ExchangeDefender will simply deliver these messages to your mailbox without quarantining it as a forgery/spoof (which it is).
Option 2: Choose a relaxed From: policy
This is a less secure option that will allow forgeries and effectively lowers your security level to that of M365/Office365 – and we strongly discourage you from doing that. However, if the client requires it you can get it done under Advanced Features > From: Policy:
Summary
If you’re seeing notification emails in your SPAM quarantine even though you’ve trusted the sender repeatedly, it’s doing so because the message is being spoofed and your admin has configured ExchangeDefender to block that activity. You can relax the security restrictions by choosing to either allow the bulk mail network or you can build your trust rules on the less-secure From: address.
Our team is always here to help but they aren’t allowed to guess without seeing the SMTP headers first – so if you ever run into an issue that you’d like us to take a look at grab the headers and provide them at https://support.exchangedefender.com and we’ll advise from there.
How Can I Improve My Email Delivery Rates?
We often get asked, “My email never got to the recipient or it ended up in their Junk/SPAM, how can I fix that?”
There are some MUST and some nice-to-have modifications you need to make to your organization and mail client (Outlook) to give your email the best chance of getting to your Inbox.
Your first step should be to look at Mail Log and Mail Error Log guide. These facilities will show you the actual error (or acceptance/message tracking you can provide to the recipient to determine the issue).
Must Haves
———-
The following features are required if you intend to send an email
on the Internet in 2023 and beyond:
1. SPF Record
You should deploy a restrictive SPF record that only includes organizations you send mail from. Make sure it ends in -all. This prevents spoofing.
2. DKIM Record
You should deploy a DKIM record, this indicates the message went through the appropriate network and has not been tampered with.
3. DMARC Record
You should deploy a DMARC record and review any rejections/problems. This is “a canary in the coal mine” that will alert you when there is an issue.
4. No External Forwards
You need to disable/remove external mail forwarding (user@ your domain forwarding mail to someone@gmail.com) and close any open relays/issues and any autoresponders/bouncers.
Nice to have
————
The following features are nice to have and will help you improve delivery.
This is a lot for smaller providers but it’s something we offer to our managed clients.
1. Separate marketing domain
DO NOT use your domain at Constant Contact, Mailchimp, etc, and also with your M365/Gmail services. Most email security providers will identify and treat the entire domain as bulk mail. Create a separate marketing/alerting domain if you send automated emails.
2. Simplify your email
Remove disclaimers, signature pictures, tracking pixels, and signature providers – if your email looks like a website it’s going to Junk. This is the least popular suggestion but if you want your email to get there drop the links and pictures.
3. Trim the thread
When replying or forwarding, delete all but the last part of the message. Each image, icon, and embedded element in the message increases the count and the likelihood that your message is SPAM.
4. No large pictures
All email security solutions look at the % of the message that is image vs. text. If you send a oneliner with a large image, it might end up in junk.
Lastly, simply ask your frequent contacts to add you to their allowed/trusted senders. This helps bypass any errors or problems with email security (which do happen!) on the receiving side but it does take some effort. When we sign up someone new they get a separate plain-text email asking them to either add the sender to allow list or forward the request to their admin (allow 174.136.31.16/28 and 207.210.228.192/28)
If none of this works, you have something that no other email provider
features – https://bypass.exchangedefender.com – try it today, helps with email
sending and receiving problems.
Top 2023 Technologies: Inbox, Encryption, and Troubleshooting Solutions for Email Issues
Can you believe that we’re almost done with the first half of 2023? We’re often asked by partners to catch up so you can see what’s moving and what’s working. We pulled up some stats and tickets and here is what you’re leveraging the most in 2023:
1. Inbox + Bypass
Nearly every email provider and every email platform/server has had issues in early 2023. Hackers and the weather haven’t helped either. All this has propelled Inbox (https://exchangedefender.com/inbox) and Bypass (https://bypass.exchangedefender.com) to our most popular sites.
Email down? It has been for a lot of people in 2023
Inbox is the new generation of LiveArchive, an always-on email service that’s replicating your live mail stream in the cloud. When our clients had problems with Outlook online and Exchange, Inbox was there to let them continue working.
When emails bounced for weird reasons, ExchangeDefender Bypass was there to help people send mail out with their email addresses. Couldn’t receive an email? Bypass helped there too.
2. Encryption + Secure Forms
Regulatory compliance and just better business practices are driving our ExchangeDefender Encryption service to the second most popular spot.
ExchangeDefender Encryption enables you to send secure messages via email, text/SMS, and web services. Whenever you need to send something that you have to track, something that should be protected by multiple passwords, that needs to expire – we’ve got you.
The most leveraged piece? Reporting when an email is read. People want to know who and when something important was actually read by the recipient. When you need to know they saw it 🙂
3. Check + XDNOC
We’ve become experts at troubleshooting mail flow and now that AI is coming into the picture everyone needs some help to integrate all the vast cloud services that are powering everything these days. In a nutshell, when email breaks they call us.
The third most visited ExchangeDefender technologies were https://check.exchangedefender.com and https://anythingdown.com – and mostly because all major email services had issues in 2023. Check site will help you configure your DNS authorizations that are the leading cause of email problems – check your stuff! The NOC is more of a canary in the land mine, stay on top of it to know when there are issues and how to work around them if your provider/server/network is having issues.
Thank you for trusting us with your email, we’re working hard to keep you secure and keep you running when issues pop up.
Passwordless Login – Lower support, better profits
ExchangeDefender Passwordless Login is a new feature that lets users get into their ExchangeDefender account easier and faster. Instead of logging in and tracking passwords, the user just enters their email address and the OTP code we send there – and they get access to all their ExchangeDefender services.
The Passwordless Login feature will drive down the support costs because that was the major issue our clients found in supporting login and authentication problems. We even joked that you may have answered your last login problem email. We now have more data and feedback indicating that this feature is a hit:
In practical terms, wider adoption of this feature means less support work for login and authentication. The fact that it’s more popular than password reset on launch means the users have already seen this feature elsewhere and trust it as a secure way to get into their account.
We’ve also heard from our technical and compliance audience: “It allowed us to finally take you up on an automated password expiration knowing that it will keep our passwords secure and users wouldn’t notice.“
The value we provide to our clients is in the ability to securely email, send secure encrypted messages, and continue emailing when there are IT issues. By making it easier for our users to get to these features everyone benefits.
Thank you for your business and for trusting us to protect your email.
Unlock Your Admin Portal with Ease: Introducing Passwordless Login
On Thursday, May 18th, the login experience at ExchangeDefender will change. Everything still works the same way as before and the new features will not affect user login: you’ll still go to https://admin.exchangedefender.com and type in your email & password to log in.
Below the main login block, you will see the new Advanced Login block featuring Passwordless and Administrator login features.
Passwordless – Tap this if you forgot your password and don’t want to set a new one. We’ll email you a code (for account verification) and when you type it in you’re good for the next 30 days.
Administrator – Tap this to log in to the management console for ExchangeDefender – Domain Admin and Service Provider. It’s safer & smarter to use user->domain, and service provider escalation and this is a more convenient way for smaller organizations.
Social and app authenticator login buttons are on the bottom and we now support all the TOTP app authenticators and encourage you to lock your accounts down.
Protect Your Privacy with Disposable Tracking Emails
Do you ever wonder who is selling your email address to marketing companies? Or do you ever sign up for services and sites while checking things out but don’t want to end up on every email they send until the end of time? Gave your email address for a 10% off discount? Used it with a sketchy parking lot?
We’ve all been there.
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to come up with an address on a whim? I’m at Subway and they want my email:
“Yeah, that’s subway+vlad@exchangedefender.com“
ExchangeDefender now let’s you do this on a whim there is nothing to set up. Just add any tag+ to the front of your email address and that’s it. Yep, any text you can imagine. Tie it to a specific search like pi+orders+vlad@exchangedefender.com so you can create an Inbox filter rule and potentially automation based on the address alone.
Message is still subject to your security policies so if it’s safe it will come right to your inbox.
Yeah but how do I unsubscribe?
You can do the traditional click & pray that the unsubscribe site is 1) up and 2) works.
The cool thing about tracking emails is that they are integrated in admin.exchangedefender.com and you can see a report similar to the daily quarantine report. Here you can see who is sending messages to which disposable address.
ExchangeDefender shows you where the sender got your email address from and where your data may have been compromised or sold.
You have even more flexibility with the address. If you’re starting to get a lot of abuse at the address, just click on the <b>Stop</b> button and we’ll bounce any email sent to that address tag+ address.
Changed your mind? Hit play and the address will be reactivated as usual.
ExchangeDefender Passwordless Logins
ExchangeDefender is pleased to announce the addition of passwordless logins. This convenient authentication method has become an industry standard and we’re implementing it at the request of many of our clients.
The problem: “I don’t know what it is, I don’t know what my password is!” OK. Reset password. Wait for the email. Pick a new password. A more complex password. One that you’ll forget as soon as you log in. We’ve all been there.
In our May update, you will see another login option under the default sign-in, allowing you to sign in with email. It’s as simple as it sounds, type in your email address and we’ll email you a magic link (with an OTP code) that you can use to log in to your account without your password. It’s that simple.
The session will stay logged in for a month so as long as you’re on the same computer/mobile you won’t have to worry about tracking passwords with ExchangeDefender.
PS. This means anyone with access to your mailbox will have access to ExchangeDefender as well – so for those of you that value security over convenience we’ve also added a domain-level policy that can disable this feature.
We should talk…
ExchangeDefender is aggressively adding features and growing the security footprint and we understand that IT staff is already spread thin enough – so if you’re tight on time or security expertise we are able to help by reviewing, applying, and configuring your mail flow so users get fewer interruptions while getting the latest and best-tuned security service for email.
Service Provider Dude, where is my SPAM?
ExchangeDefender is the ultimate cybersecurity wrapper for an organization and we already discussed how Users and Domain Admins can locate messages ExchangeDefender was configured to keep out of the mailbox.
ExchangeDefender users have a beautiful and powerful way to access their quarantined mail and work around email problems, domain admins have flexible settings, policies and access to the logs to keep the organization protected. So what do ExchangeDefender Service Providers have that others don’t?
ExchangeDefender Service Provider access enables you to do deep troubleshooting and emergency “incident response” activities. Service Provider login is the highest level of control in ExchangeDefender so you have access to all the data that ExchangeDefender has.
Accessing Logs
ExchangeDefender Service Provider access gives you access to the centralized log facility where you can locate any message ExchangeDefender has processed from a central pane of glass.
You can download any search results as a CSV file that can be better visualized and analyzed in a spreadsheet and reporting tool of your choice. This is particularly useful when you don’t know the sender or are searching for an automated sender with a fake tracing email address.
Our partners frequently rely on this facility to troubleshoot for missing messages.
Downloading Raw Logs
ExchangeDefender Service Providers also have access to raw SMTP Mail Logs which give our partners direct access to low level SMTP transactions and error logs. It’s located in the same location as log search.
Service Providers rely on these logs as the ultimate source of truth regarding the traffic for the ExchangeDefender protected domain. This is a fantastic tool if you’re looking for intermittent delivery errors or policy violations or just have a very specific email or server you’re looking for.
Logs will get pulled from all our services and will be available for download within 24 hours. Don’t let the boilerplate distract you, almost all of our clients will get their logs within the hour. From there you can load the logs into your favorite analytics tool and dig for the errors and problems in the mail flow.
To sum it up
ExchangeDefender can help you account for every message going in and out of your organization. While users have a powerful and beautiful way to access their quarantined mail or continue where they left off during an outage or email problem, domain admins and service providers have far more access to the logs so they can troubleshoot around different settings and policies.
Domain Admin Dude, where is my SPAM?
In our previous post we discussed how users can get to their own SPAM quarantines but did you know that you as the domain administrator have access to EVERYONE’s junk mail?
ExchangeDefender Admin Portal features a SPAM Admin section where you can release ANY message caught by ExchangeDefender to ANY user in your organization.
The three icons next to the message are Release Message, Allow Sender, and Mark as reviewed. Releasing a message will get it to the end users mailbox while allow sender will create an Allow policy for that email address so it skips SPAM checks in the future.
Many organizations designate a SPAM Admin that is in charge of fishing out important messages, attachments, and other content that was blocked by an IT or corporate policy. If you have a lot of users that are not tech-savvy this feature will save you a ton of time.
I already have an Allow Policy and my mail from this sender is always ending up in Junk Mail!
ExchangeDefender Advanced Features can help you here as this problem is so common we’ve built an entire feature to help solve it. The issue is, most of the messages coming are from automated systems (password reminders, newsletters, appointment confirmations, etc) that are sent by a computer instead of someone’s Outlook or phone. They all rely on mass/bulk mail systems like Amazon SES, Sendgrid, etc and those networks use a fake email address to send a message every time (so they can track bounces). You can’t create an allow policy (whitelist) for those addresses as they change every time, so take a look at the Bulk Mailer Policy section:
Here you can tweak the policy applied to each bulk mailer network to accommodate your users. By default we scan each message from these networks for SPAM contents but depending on the problem you are trying to solve with SPAM you can change it to Block or Allow messages from that network.
I already did all that, seriously, where is my email?
Most of policy enforcement problems stem from not knowing which message the user is looking. As mentioned earlier, automated systems forge the email address they send mail from so the address you see in Outlook is not the actual email address. It’s tough to make policies or find the message when you don’t know the senders email address: ExchangeDefender Mail Log to the rescue:
As the Domain Admin you have access to all the email logs for your domains. Click on Mail log and you’ll be able to search for the message based on time, date, subject, etc.
You can also scroll through the mail log. See the [Full address] below some senders? Those are the fake tracking email addresses we’re talking about. Generally you can create a domain-wide allow policy for the entire domain if you trust that the sender isn’t going to send malicious content (we’ll still check if any attachments are infected and apply your file/extension policy).
To sum it up
As an ExchangeDefender Domain admin you have powerful tools to locate SPAM, apply allow or block policies, and to scope them down to the bulk mailer network that is usually the #1 culprit. Go figure, nobody wants these messages and they sometimes get inadvertently reported as junk anyhow.
ExchangeDefender can save hours of going through transaction and message logs by presenting all of your messages in a user-friendly way where you can quickly release them to your user, create an allow policy so it doesn’t get intercepted again, and designate clients trusted partners/networks that should always go straight to their mailbox.