Defensive Security Handbook

Chapter 21. The Extra Mile

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After reading this book, you should be ready to provide the sound building blocks of an information security program. You should also be fully equipped to handle the common insecure practices that we’ve seen in so many environments. But the learning doesn’t stop here! Here in the extra mile we’ll give you some additional tidbits of information and some great resources for you to go check out that will make your defenses that much stronger.

Email Servers

Running and installing an email server is a large time and technology commitment. Modern spam filters block 99.99% of email, while more than 80% of daily email traffic is junk mail. Bulk spam and phishing issues will be concerns, as well as other commonly misconfigured server settings.

Many email servers currently on the internet are misconfigured, which contributes in part to the amount of spam being sent. These configurations not only contribute to spam, but they may delay or prevent the organization’s mail from being delivered. Certain configurations will land the IP or domain of the mail server on a blacklist, which organizations can subscribe to for enhancing filtering efforts. There are some common configuration checks should be performed on mail servers being hosted in your environment. MXToolbox provides a large list of different tests that can be performed ...