Zen Dzign » Email

Kerio MailServer for Windows 7

Peter Zendzian — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:30:31 +0000

On October 7, ServerWatch covered Kerio MailServer’s certification for Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.6. “Kerio’s groupware extension of Microsoft Outlook, Kerio Outlook Connector, is also updated for Windows 7…In addition to Windows 7 support, Kerio added support for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, iPhone 3.1 and iPod Touch 3.1.1 in late September.”

Create an SSL certificate with strong, 2048 bit encryption

Peter Zendzian — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:59:45 +0000

When creating either a self signed certificate or a certificate request, Kerio MailServer uses 1024 bit encryption. You may however prefer stronger encryption, especially if you are using a signing authority such as GoDaddy, which requires 2048 bit encryption. In this case, you may use the free OpenSSL utility that is available with most Unix or Linux based systems. There is also a version of the tool available for the Windows Operating system.
Self signed certificates generated by Kerio MailServer carry a default expiration of 1 year. The OpenSSL utility will also allow you to define your own expiration, for example 3 years. For specific instructions and usage of the OpenSSL utility, read the Knowledgebase article.

Tips & Tricks: Optimize performance of Kerio MailServer

Peter Zendzian — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:15:47 +0000

Kerio MailServer includes log viewing directly within the administration console. This is a quick and easy way to troubleshoot problems, identify attempts to breach security, or monitor daily activity. Although these files contain only textual information, over time they can become quite large, and without any maintenance, they can degrade the performance of the server and consume valuable space on the disk. By right clicking in the window of any log event, you can choose ‘Log Settings’. In this dialog you can enable rotation based on a time range or file size. It is highly recommended to enable this option and define a maximum number of rotated files. For example, rotate the logs every month and keep at most 12 rotated files. This would preserve up to one year’s worth of log information. Kerio MailServer does not access log files that have been rotated, therefore you can move old log files to another data store if you prefer to retain these log files beyond the specified rotation settings.

Protecting your email address from domain spoofing with Kerio MailServer

Peter Zendzian — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:18:00 +0000

Protect your email address from domain spoofing with Caller-ID and Sender Policy Framework

You may have noticed an increase in a particular type of email spam, where the spammer uses your email address as the sender in an attempt to lower the spam rating of the message. In order to combat this type of spam, Kerio MailServer available at ZZ Servers includes two special Anti-Spam technologies that use Domain Name services to validate the IP address of a sending mail server.

Here is how it works: When Kerio MailServer receives a connection from a remote mail server, it gathers the sender’s email domain from the email headers. Kerio MailServer then sends a request to its Domain Name Server, asking for a special type of text record (Caller-ID or SPF), which belongs to the sender’s email domain. If this record exists, the Domain Name Server will reply with the contents of the text record, which includes a specially formatted list of IP Addresses that are allowed to send outgoing email using the specified email domain. If the sending mail server’s IP address does not belong to the returned list, the receiving Kerio MailServer will refuse to accept the message. Although this technology is highly effective and yields virtually no false positives, it is rather difficult to configure, primarily because few Domain Name hosting providers support these record types. An extensive Knowledge base article exists in the Kerio website support section that details exactly how to properly configure both Caller-ID and SPF records.

ZZ Servers offers Kerio MailServer as a comprehensive Microsoft Exchange alternative that simplifies administration and lowers total costs of ownership. Kerio MailServer offers cross platform collaboration, mobile wireless synchronization, robust security, automated backups and more. Visit ZZ Servers for a quote today.