Falsch erkannt – Ham?
Um eine fälschlich erkannte Mail zu melden, leiten Sie bitte den Text an ham@siekmann.net weiter. Hierzu werden auch die “Fingerabdrücke” der E-Mail benötigt, Sie finden diese zwischen den Zeilen:

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v=1.0 c=1 p=XXXXXXXX p=XXXXXX
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Nicht erkannt – Spam?
Falls Sie Spam erhalten, der von unserem System nicht erkannt worden ist, leiten Sie ihn bitte an uns weiter: spam@siekmann.net. Auch hier brauchen wir die oben genannten Daten. Sie finden Sie bei nicht erkanntem Spam in den Kopfzeilen der Nachricht. Je nach verwendetem E-Mail client ist die Methode, sie anzuzeigen, unterschiedlich. In Thunderbird können Sie die Kopfzeilen mit der Tastenkombination CTRL-SHIFT-U anzeigen, in Lotus Notes muessen sie die Dokumenteigenschaften öffnen und das Feld X-Cloudmark-Spam anzeigen und den Inhalt kopieren.

Vielen Dank, daß Sie unser System mit verbessern!

Ihre Postmeister.

Phishing is the other ugly brother of email abuse. Recently, it has become much more sophisticated and is an integral part of cybercrime. Just as the year wound down, the Chaos Computer Congress in Germany ran a break-out session that demonstrated a highly likely attack against the root of trust in the Internet of today: a viable means of faking a SSL certificate.

SSL certificates are used to prove that the website you mean to visit is the one that it says it is. Website operators are using a public key infrastructure that has cryptography built in which makes it really, rally hard to break into the secure communication with one of those websites. Unless, that is – it uses a weak encryption standard.

A recent survey of Netcraft has found that a whopping 14% of all SSL certificates tested this month were using weak crytography. What does this mean to you as a user? A chance that the next big phishing attack is fooling you into revealing confidential information because you can’t trust your browser any more.

Until the end of January, that is. Verisign, the root CA is phasing out MD5 certificates, so by then end of this month this type of attack will be of theoretical nature. Until then, be careful!

With spam exceeding 95% of inbound message volume, the need to protect your email infrastructure is higher than ever. Today’s messaging threaths include a blend of viruses, phishing attackes (some of them even targeted) and spam. While spam is a mere nuisance, viruses and phishing attacks are a severe threat to your company. Why ? The answer is simple: The recipients of these messages are humans, which are prone to make mistakes. Such as opening a message that exploits a hole in your protection level. Even just opening a message can trigger the installation of malware, a type of software that installs itself on the victims computer without their knowledge.

What happens when your company has become infected? A multitude of possible outcomes:

• Your mail server will become blacklisted and you will be unable to send email
• your employee’s PC will become infected and compromised. Once it is infected, nothing is secure anymore
• the infected PC will spew out spam and become the source of outgoing spam, risking possible litigation by the recipient

All in all, your risk is substantial. Take immediate action now and protect your whole infrastucture with a simple call to the messaging experts. We’ve been doing this since 1997 and we are really good at it.

info@siekmann.net

Messaging means more than just electronic messaging. In today’s business environment, the messaging infrastructure defines your competitive edge. Whether your email system is capable of running at 99.999% availability, can receive 1000 messages a second or send out at an even higher rate can become a critical factor.

Siekmann Corporation runs datacenters in the U.S. and Europe with redundancy that goes beyond what you could possibly need. The expertise gained in working with the largest Internet Service Providers worldwide enabled us to deliver services in an unmatched quality at a price level you would not thought possible for a company that prides itself with being part of a vibrant business community in Portland, Oregon.

Have a look at our infrastructure or give us a call. We would be happy to demo our network to you !

While technically absolutely possible, it may not make sense to burden yourself with running your own website. Think about important criteria to consider in outsourcing:

• is your web site a critical part of your business?
• do you need it running 24 hours a day, seven days a week?
• could you become a target of denial of service attacks or extortion?
• are you running critical services that your customers are relying upon?
• can you drive into the office at 3am Saturday morning to restart a crashed server
• do you really want to assume such responsibilites?

These questions are just some factors to consider in your outsourcing decision. Let’s get a conversation started about your needs. Feel free to contact us at info@siekmann.net. We’re happy to help.

Defining a viable IT strategy consists of setting goals, metric to measure achieving those goals and constant refining. Just as security is not a state, but a process an IT strategy needs adjustment.

Fundamentals

The basis of your strategy is typically what operating systems you chose to implement, e.g. Mac vs.  Linux vs. Windows. Or Solaris. Or BSD.  A multitude of possibilities need to be reduced to form a clear picture for the next years to come. License questions need to be answered. Are you ready for the open source plunge?

Strategic responses

What would happen if your biggest competitor implemented a technology that outperforms your business every time, with every customer, with every deal? Would you be concerned or ready to respond? If you are ready to respond, what is the appropriate response? Is it copying their system, also known as the most sincere form of flattery? Or can you even beat them by coming up with something better? Let’s work on the latter – Getting something better will always succeed!

Operations

Today’s successful companies use email, groupware, customer relationship management sofware, bug tracking systems and a number of individual systems that run in harmony. Or not? If they don’t you are wasting precious resources. That’s not desirable. Let’s look together for a solution that runs in sync.

The evolution of spam has led to a high water mark of 95% of messages being spam. While the group of people creating and delivering spam is fairly small and estimated to be less than a hundred individuals worldwide, their infrastructure is the most capable weapon in their arsenal.

Botnets are being used to deliver spam more than ever. Individual PCs become parts of botnets by running software that has been sent through spam. Typically, by means of an embedded link in the message, sometimes coming in the form of an attachments. The most recent form of malware is being sent using legitimate infrastructure. All major ISPs face the problem of hacked accounts and abused infrastructure. Some are pretty good in cleaning up, some are really simply overwhelmed by the sheer volume of automated attacks on their registration systems.

Some users that receive spam containing those links, also known as abusive messages, blindly open them and will click on the attachment. Based on the human reflex of curiosity, not knowing any better or for other reasons. The fact is that thousands of PCs every day become new infected parts of a giant network of systems abused to deliver abusive messages.

The most infested systems are typically in eastern european countries, such as Russia or Hungary. Other European countries like Denmark, Germany or Spain are other significant sources of spam.

What can you do?

The simplest solution is to implement a reputation based anti-spam system that uses DNS blacklists, also known as DNSRBLs. Those lists can be queried freely within certain limitations and are likely to reduce your inbound volume by up to 80%. That’s is a significant reduction that will save you significant amounts of storage, processing power and ultimately it will make you safer.

To take it one step further with a comprehensive anti-abuse system is the next, logical step. Siekmann Corporations has implemented messaging security for some of the largest ISPs in the world and is a natural fit for your company as well. We’d love to talk to you about your needs!