August 2, 2007

FEATURE EDITORIAL

Trusted-Class Delivery Option Combats Fraud

The proliferation and sophistication of online fraud creates a ripple effect that causes damage to more than just the unfortunate victims. It deals a blow to eCommerce and the Internet as a whole. In the Gartner report, E-Commerce Loses Big Because of Security Concerns, Gartner analysts estimate that in 2006 consumer anxiety over Internet security caused a 2 billion dollar loss in eCommerce and banking transactions.

Even the federal government has not been immune to brandjacking, the hijacking of an organizations brand. Online fraud scams have spoofed federal organizations such as the Better Business Bureau and the IRS, as well as government agencies on every level—federal, state and local.

Fresh from a June announcement that five out of the top five U.S. ISPs have implemented its CertifiedEmail technology, Goodmail Systems this week announced that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the U.S. Department of Labor, along with 145 other federal, state, and local government entities are now sending CertifiedEmail. The announcement was made jointly with GovDelivery, a leading provider of government-to-citizen email solutions.

GovDelivery's email capabilities are specifically designed to meet the needs of its government clients. Its flagship product, GovDelivery Digital Subscription Management, uses a proprietary Software as a Service (SaaS) platform to provide organizations with fully-automated and on-demand communication with the public. "Government agencies in particular understand the importance of trusted email communications," said Scott Burns, CEO of GovDelivery. "CertifiedEmail is a unique solution that increases a citizen's likelihood of reading official government email and directly addresses the rising problem of phishing, and e-scams."

Goodmail's CertifiedEmail is a trusted-class delivery option offered to qualifying, legitimate commercial and non-profit emailers for messages to existing customers and users who specifically opted-in to receive messages. Once accredited by Goodmail, these senders' emails are delivered with cryptographically secure tokens which participating mailbox providers detect. CertifiedEmail messages are labeled with a unique blue ribbon envelope icon in the email program, enabling recipients to immediately distinguish the legitimate messages from messages of unknown authenticity or safety.

"With spam and phishing hitting historic highs even in the last six months, we have seen the limits of technologies which attempt to filter out the bad email," notes Goodmail co-founder and CEO Richard Gingras. "Consumers want their email system to let them know which email in their inbox is safe to open and act upon."

The June announcement noted Comcast, Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable's Road Runner and Verizon would be joining AOL and Yahoo!, already in operation and supporting CertifiedEmail. The new ISPs, along with GovDelivery anticipate implementing the system over the course of 2007.

Compliance and Management for Office Communications Server 2007

FaceTime Communications, a provider of solutions for securing and managing IM, peer-to-peer and Web-based greynets, announced yesterday support for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 with its IMAuditor for OCS. FaceTime is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and its IMAuditor products have provided security, management and compliance for Microsoft customers since Live Communications Server debuted in 2003.

FaceTime says its security and management solutions provide IT management with the controls to protect heterogeneous IM environments consisting of public and enterprise IM. "A real-time collaboration environment already exists in many organizations, with unsanctioned, consumer-based applications and public IM clients providing the functionality for users," said Frank Cabri, vice president of marketing and product management for FaceTime Communications. "With the rapid adoption of applications such as Office Communications Server, the environment has become increasingly heterogeneous requiring IT to be able to manage and control all real-time communications applications to enforce policy and mitigate security risks."

FaceTime supports both Live Communications Server and the new Office Communications Server 2007. Availability of the new IMAuditor for OCS is expected in 30 days.

OWA Security Risks

Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access (OWA) is the corporate Web mail solution of choice for a majority of companies today. A new white paper recently released by Messageware, a provider of enterprise productivity and security solutions for OWA, highlights what they term as "often overlooked" security risks for organizations running OWA with a Microsoft Internet Security & Acceleration (ISA) firewall server.

Topping the list of vulnerabilities are users logging-in using shared computers (such as at conference kiosks, at home, Internet cafes, client sites or university computer labs) and leaving an active session, either by navigating away from the page or closing the browser window without first logging-off. Messageware's report notes that when a user logs into OWA it creates a cookie that can act as a continuous bridge into OWA user accounts and potentially, one's network or servers. While ISA Server 2000 & 2004 contain an auto log-off feature, the white paper points out there are still scenarios where unauthorized users can access active sessions. It goes on to say that the newly released 2006 version does not have the auto log-off feature, resulting in users being able to navigate away from active OWA sessions without any warning.

Messageware offers two security software solutions that work hand-in-hand with OWA. Download the white paper for more information.

MESSAGING NEWS CASE STUDY BRIEF:

CommuniGate Systems and Aurora Online

CommuniGate Systems, a scalable carrier-class rich media Internet communications solutions, announced last week that Aurora Online, an Ontario-based ASP, selected CommuniGate Pro platform to provide a highly reliable messaging and groupware solution for its small- to medium-sized business (SMB) subscribers. With CommuniGate Pro, Aurora Online customers can manage their email, in addition to schedule meetings, keep track of RSS news feeds, chat, upload photos, music, and videos all from the same interface.

Aurora Online targets companies with 20 to 200 users that typically do not have large IT departments and do not want the complexity of in-house Exchange or IP communications servers. The initial deployment has 50 companies on the platform. The company says that CommuniGate Pro's Dynamic Cluster architecture provides 99.999 percent uptime and gives Aurora Online the ability to easily add nodes as needed for increased capacity and rich media services like VoIP or IPTV. CommuniGate Pro supports Microsoft Outlook in full corporate workgroup mode, and the Microsoft Messenger (Corporate client) for Windows and Mac. As a result, Aurora Online's corporate customers can continue to utilize Microsoft Outlook for end-users, while switching the back end to the secure, and easy-to-manage CommuniGate Pro server environment.

We welcome your ideas and your news for Messaging Newswire’s News & Trends in Email Security. Let us know what you think by sending your comments to editorial@messagingnews.com. Written or compiled by Stephanie Jordan. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

For marketing information on this newsletter or other Messaging News products contact jvictor@messagingnews.com