Protect Your Email server
Barracuda Networks' Barracuda
Spam Firewall 300
Reader:
Jacob Rowley
Systems analyst
Product: Barracuda Spam Firewall 300
Company: Barracuda Networks
Contact: www.barracudanetworks.com
Have you noticed a decrease
in the amount of spam
you've been receiving? Neither has Jacob Rowley. And like
IT pros everywhere, he knows that
some of those unwanted messages
contain deadly viruses that could
bring down his system. However,
Jacob's company uses Barracuda
Networks' Barracuda Spam Firewall
300, an integrated hardware and
software solution that protects email
servers from spam, viruses, phishing
messages, and spyware.
Barracuda Spam Firewall has a
detection rate of as much as 97 percent and registers only 0.01 percent
of false positives. To deal with the occasional false positive, “Barracuda has built some excellent
search options into the product,
which let me find a message
that got blocked very easily and
quickly,” says Jacob. He adds that
Barracuda lets him search by
whitelisted, blocked, virus, quarantined, or delivered messages.
You can also search for messages
by username or domain name.
“Barracuda Spam Firewall is one
of the best pieces of equipment
in our entire organization,” Jacob
says. “It's such a great appliance
that some people forget we have
it because it does such a great
job!”
Secure and Manage Your Passwords
Dominik Reichl's KeePass Password Safe
Reader:
Carmen Nuland
Senior systems analyst
Product: KeePass Password Safe
Company: Dominik Reichl
Contact: keepass.sourceforge.net
IT pros know how hard
it can be for users to
remember all the passwords they need for numerous Web
sites, systems, and applications. Too often, administrators as well as
users resort to writing passwords on
paper or storing them in an unsecured document. Carmen Nuland
used to use an unprotected Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to hold all
her URLs, user IDs, and passwords. But then she discovered Dominik Reichl's KeePass Password Safe.
Carmen says that with KeePass, she needs to remember only one
password. The free, open-source software lets her create one database
for personal passwords and another for work-related passwords and
secure both databases by using a master password, key-disk, or combination of the two. “You can also sort passwords by creating groups to
store Internet URLs, email, software licenses, and banking passwords,” says Carmen. “Plus, KeePass will automatically create random passwords for you, if you wish.”
KeePass uses the Advanced Encryption Standard and Twofish algorithms to encrypt the database. If you copy a password entry, KeePass
secures the clipboard, then automatically clears it after you've pasted
the contents or after a certain period of time. In addition, KeePass locks
the database when you minimize the window. You can export your
password list to a variety of formats, including comma-separated value
(CSV) and XML.
Easy configuration Analysis and diagnostics
Gabriel Topala's System Information for Windows
Reader:
Curtus Regnier
Owner and president of In the Light Consulting
Product: System Information for
Windows
Company: Gabriel Topala
Contact: www.gtopala.com
While working on security-related projects, Curtus Regnier has to check systems for vulnerabilities such as open shares, open ports, and improperly managed services and went looking for a tool that can quickly
and easily give him the information he needs. He
found Gabriel Topala's System Information for
Windows (SIW) freeware. SIW provides Curtus all
the data he needs, plus a lot more.
Compatible with all versions of Windows, SIW performs configuration analysis and diagnostics, listing information such as specifications for the OS and
installed software, serial numbers, and open files. The tool also provides information about hardware and
peripherals, including the motherboard, memory, video cards, printers, disk drives, SCSI devices, network
shares and connections, and network cards.
“A number of tools, when used together, can perform the functions of SIW,” says Curtus. “But this tool is so
comprehensive that you only need one tool to do your work.” The software can create reports in comma-separated
value, HTML, text, or XML format, and you can run it in batch mode. Curtus especially likes the fact that, because
SIW doesn't need to be installed on the computer, he can carry it with him on his USB drive wherever he goes.
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