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Vol. 12, #11 - Mar 19, 2007 - Issue #617
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Outlook 2007 Users Complain About Slow Performance
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- Editor's Corner
- Antispyware Advocates Try To Get SPY ACT Bill Through
- CounterSpy VIPRE Engine Already Beats Major AV Players!
- Quote Of The Week
- Admin Toolbox
- Admin Tools We Think You Shouldn't Be Without
- Tech Briefing
- DST Switch Offered Lessons Learned
- Tip: Improving Microsoft Virtual Server Security
- Secure Settings For Shared Files
- How To Analyze Exchange Server SMTP Log Files In Microsoft Excel
- More Powerful Analysis Services MDX Built Into SQL Server 2005
- Windows Server News
- W2K3 SP 2 Thrown At Us
- Outlook 2007 Users Complain About Slow Performance
- WServer Third Party News
- It's Heeeere! Ninja V2.1 With Disclaimers Released
- WServerNews 'Fave' Links
- This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff.
- WServerNews - Product of the Week
- MARCH MADNESS - "End-Of-First-Quarter-Blowout!"
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MARCH MADNESS - "End-Of-First-Quarter-Blowout!"
OK, here is the Q1 special. Check this out. It's only valid until
the end of this month. A 50-pack of Ninja with AV and 50 pack of
CounterSpy Enterprise, regular list is $2,029 but now for $1,495.
Ninja now INCLUDES Disclaimers. Call for even better competitive
upgrade pricing if you have an existing solution in place!
CounterSpy Enterprise
http://www.wservernews.com/070319-CSE
Sunbelt Messaging Ninja
http://www.wservernews.com/070319-SMN
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Editor's Corner |
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Antispyware Advocates Try To Get SPY ACT Bill Through
The U.S. House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and
Consumer Protection this week held hearings about a a proposed new spyware
bill. This is the third time in the last few years this is being discussed.
The first two attempts passed the House but died in the Senate. And,
again, some people claimed it could harm Internet advertisers.
The bill, with cutesy name "Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber
Trespass Act" (Spy Act) would make it unlawful to install software that
gathers information, monitors usage, serves up advertisements or modifies
browser and other settings on a computer without explicit user consent.
Violations would be treated as unfair or deceptive trade practices subject
to enforcement action by the FTC The bill also allows fines of up to
$3 million for some types of violations.
Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) claimed that this time it would pass.
I hope it will be more effective than the CAN SPAM act, but I do not
have my hopes up. I'm sure that the Russian cyber mafia also won't
be all that impressed.
CounterSpy VIPRE Engine Already Beats Major AV Players!
The Virustotal site is a place where you can submit a sample and see
which AV engines catch it. This is updated every hour, and the results
are very interesting too. Sunbelt's VIPRE engine (still in its infancy)
beats out McAfee, Sophos, AVG, Symantec, and Norman in REAL WORLD TESTS.
The VIPRE engine will be built into the coming CounterSpy Enterprise V2.0.
(and is already in hundreds of thousands of the consumer version)
Here is the link to the Virustotal site so you can see for yourself:
http://www.wservernews.com/070319-Virustotal
And here is the link to CounterSpy Enterprise - grab a 30-day trial:
http://www.wservernews.com/070319-CounterSpy-Enterprise
Quote Of The Week
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one."
-- Albert Einstein
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Tech Briefing |
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DST Switch Offered Lessons Learned
The daylight-saving time patches now in place mean that Windows shops are
safe through the fall and beyond - unless U.S. lawmakers decide to switch
the DST date yet again. If that happens, IT experts who survived the
daylight-saving time deadline offer some words of wisdom in order to make
the next transition go a little more smoothly. Read more in this exclusive
article!
http://www.wservernews.com/070319-DST-Switch
Tip: Improving Microsoft Virtual Server Security
Are you a security administrator worried about rogue Microsoft Virtual
Server 2005 virtual machines showing up on your network? This expert tip
will go through detecting rogue virtual machines on your network. Also,
find out why the potent combination of Alternate Data Streams and virtual
machines could make searching for rogue virtual machines more difficult.
http://www.wservernews.com/070319-Virtual-Server-Security
Secure Settings For Shared Files
Proper file sharing settings are vital to ensuring that important and
commonly used documents stay exactly the way you want them. With this
advice from Windows hardening expert Jonathan Hassell, get the information
you need on how to keep your shared files intact. (free registration)
http://www.wservernews.com/070319-Secure-Shared-Files
How To Analyze Exchange Server SMTP Log Files In Microsoft Excel
In this step-by-step guide, Exchange MVP Brien Posey explains how to convert
an Exchange Server SMTP log file into a text file and import it into
Microsoft Excel. He then walks through two approaches for evaluating those
log files to determine your Exchange Server's SMTP bandwidth consumption.
(free registration)
http://www.wservernews.com/070319-SMTP-Logs
More Powerful Analysis Services MDX Built Into SQL Server 2005
MDX in SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services brings exciting improvements including
query support and expression/calculation language. Baya Pavliashvili highlights
CASE, statements, sub-queries and SCOPE functions, which make MDX more powerful
and flexible for your intricate business intelligence solutions.
http://www.wservernews.com/070319-MDX
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Windows Server News |
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W2K3 SP 2 Thrown At Us
W2K3 SP2 was suddenly thrown at us this week. Sure, bring it on, right
after DST we can handle some more work in the evenings and weekends!
Perhaps that is the reason they did not announce any patches for Patch
Tuesday, and said "well, they can roll out SP2 instead". Heh.
Redmond has never really positioned service packs as security patches, but
SP's are for sure important for security from my perspective. This SP2
will be the last one for W2K3 before Redmond ships the new Windows Server
"Longhorn" planned for the end of this year. We were kind of expecting
SP2 to come out of the woodwork, since they shipped the release candidate
for SP2 late November, but it was still a bit unexpected.
Initially, it looked like there was one major Gotcha. The Release Notes
stated that if you applied IE7 after W2K3 SP1, you needed to -uninstall-
IE 7 before you install SP2. HUH? Right. But after the initial confusion
the release notes were updated and that IE7 removal is no longer necessary.
Here they are:
http://www.wservernews.com/070319-W2K3-SP2
Here is the list of SP2 updates:
http://www.wservernews.com/070319-SP2-Updates
SP2 gives us fixes for a huge amount of bugs in W2K3, many related to .NET
and Com+, as well as some clustering problems. SP2 also came with some new
features for Microsoft Management Console 3.0, like improved command line
management tools. SP2 also supports including Wireless Protected Access 2
(WPA2). But... TEST, TEST. TEST before you roll it out.
Outlook 2007 Users Complain About Slow Performance
ComputerWorld reported about early users of Outlook 2007 voicing widespread
complaints about the software's sluggish performance. Symptoms being reported
by users include temporary freezes when commands are executed or windows are
opened, an inability of Outlook to keep up with text as it is being typed and
slowness in sending and receiving e-mails. Most of the problems don't appear
to be the result of underpowered PCs or of faulty or misconfigured e-mail
servers. Instead, users say, and Microsoft acknowledges, the underlying cause
is changes made under Outlook's hood to accommodate new features such as RSS
feeds and indexing for faster searches. Some bloggers working with beta
versions of Outlook 2007 have been complaining for months. Even loyalists
such as Microsoft's Most Valuable Professionals - the company's elite corps
of unpaid technical helpers - are grumbling. Story at ComputerWorld:
http://www.wservernews.com/070319-Outlook-2007-Slow
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WServer Third Party News |
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It's Heeeere! Ninja V2.1 With Disclaimers Released
Here is the Press Release.
Clearwater, Florida, USA - Mar 14, 2007 - Sunbelt Software, a leading
provider of Windows security software, today announced the release of
Sunbelt Messaging Ninja(tm) version 2.1, the all-in-one, best-of-breed email
security product for Microsoft Exchange. New features in Ninja 2.1 include
disclaimer functionality, an improved antispam engine for better spam
detection, and console management enhancements. Messaging Ninja provides
integrated antispam, antivirus, disclaimers, and attachment filtering
with an extendable plug-in architecture. This provides organizations a
single solution to combat today's messaging threats while extending email
security functionality to protect against new messaging threats in
the future.
"Adding disclaimer functionality to Ninja helps administrators reduce
the cost of having a separate disclaimer product, further increasing
the value of Ninja," said Alex Eckelberry, president of Sunbelt Software.
"With Ninja 2.1, our Exchange customers continue to have advanced email
management capabilities while also ensuring compliance with regulatory
and corporate policies."
Ninja's new disclaimer plug-in delivers functionality to include global and
user-based disclaimers for all outbound email for Exchange 2000 and 2003.
Administrators have the ability to configure policy-based disclaimers based
on specific users, groups, domains, or public folders. User-based disclaimers
enable users to adjust their disclaimer statements according to a specific
user or department. Ninja also prevents multiple disclaimers when replying
or forwarding and gives administrators the ability to allow users to bypass
the disclaimer on a per email basis.
Additionally, disclaimer templates are included to allow easy set up of
disclaimers using HTML or plain text. Template samples include legal
disclaimers, virus warning disclaimers, copyright disclaimers, and more.
New reports are also available that provide detailed information on the
use of disclaimers within the organization.
For its antispam capabilities, Ninja uses two scanning engines: Cloudmark's
and Sunbelt's, providing users with both a heuristic and signature-based
approach. Version 2.1 includes the latest Cloudmark antispam engine with key
enhancements that improve the detection of the latest spam variants including
image spam. Additionally, administrators now have the ability to adjust the
efficacy of spam detection while tuning the amount of resources available to
the engine.
With improvements to Ninja's management console, new database management
tools allow administrators to purge old records from existing databases and
compress Microsoft Access databases to reduce file size. Enhanced proxy support
has also been added for systems that utilize NTLM authentication.
Sunbelt Messaging Ninja is priced aggressively for all corporate environments
and includes one year of support, updates and upgrades. New customers can
purchase Sunbelt Messaging Ninja on a per-mailbox basis. Pricing includes
the first year maintenance and starts at $184.95 for 5 mailboxes with a
sliding scale discount based on number of mailboxes. A 30-day trial
version of Sunbelt Messaging Ninja is available.
http://www.wservernews.com/070319-Download-Ninja
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WServerNews 'Fave' Links |
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This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff.
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WServerNews - Product of the Week |
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MARCH MADNESS - "End-Of-First-Quarter-Blowout!"
OK, here is the Q1 special. Check this out. It's only valid until
the end of this month. A 50-pack of Ninja with AV and 50 pack of
CounterSpy Enterprise, regular list is $2,029 but now for $1,495.
Call for even -better- competitive upgrade pricing if you have an
existing solution in place!
CounterSpy Enterprise
http://www.wservernews.com/070319-March-Madness-CSE
Sunbelt Messaging Ninja
http://www.wservernews.com/070319-March-Madness-Ninja
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