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Tuesday, March 25, 2003Spam fritters away email resources
 Spam, the name variously attributed to the cult British TV series 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' and the US's WWII Army K rations is now part of common parlance to mean unwanted or unsolicited email. The scourge of Spam affects all email users, at home and at work, and has real and damaging consequences. Now we see many parts of the industry are marshalling their resources to fight back. One of the latest of these is by a sub-committee of the IETF, the Internet Research Task Force's Anti-Spam Research Group. With their strength behind any move to provide technical mechanisms to help eliminate such unwanted traffic may have a chance of success. Increasingly we see the manufacturers building products to address this issue too. The Borderware MXtreme email firewall is the first hardened solution that claims to eliminate Spam almost entirely.
Related links
Spam to be canned a report from Maggie Shiels on BBCi
Internet Research Task Force
Spam Whitepaper
Spam Cop , Sam Spadeposted by Robert Campbell 7:15 AM Monday, March 24, 2003Managing Email
 Stephen Mason has published another interesting article on email and e-mail archiving in the latest issue of the New Law Journal. Unfortunately the journal is not available in electronic format but you could try looking on Stephen's web siteposted by Robert Campbell 1:32 PM Sunday, March 23, 2003Misguided US Marshall
 Columnist Patrick Marshall of the Seattle Times, the online version that is, demonstrates in his latest Saturday Q&A article a complete lack of understanding of the threat posed by connecting any kind of unprotected computing system the internet. Patrick obviously still belives that the methodology of a hacker is a personal one, individuals seeking out remote machines, a hands on approach. In reality the biggest threat is from automated worms and script-kiddie applications that trawl through subnets and drop trojans on unprotected IP addresses. Even dial-up users are open to this form of attack no matter how short a time they may be on line. The message must be if you plug any system on to the Internet it must be protected. For home users our recomendation would be, as a minimum get behind a NAT router with some form of Firewall and install ZoneAlarm on every PC. For commercial users even in a SOHO get a real firewall your data isn't worth anything less!
Related links
The Honeynet Project
BorderWare Firewall Server
Robert Graham's web site and his definition of a Hackerposted by Robert Campbell 5:59 PM Lost e-mail costs Big Money Firms $8,000,000+The US SEC has fined five broker-dealers a total of in excess of $8.25M for failing to preserve e-mail communications as part of an investigation by federal and industry regulators. The five firms which although have not admitted or denied the regulator's accusations have agreed to pay a total of $1.65M each. The firms in question are some of the most prominant financial organisations in the world.
The SEC levied the fines against the broker-dealers in association with the New York Stock Exchange and the National Association of Securities Dealers which were also involved in the investigations. The regulators alledged the firms in questions failed to keep e-mails, relating to an individual firm's business, for between two and three years as is required by provisions of the Securities Exchange Act. [SEC 17a]. Of particular note was the allagations also included the notion that the firms were also sanctioned for failing to put into place any centralised assurance mechanisms to maintain and enforce compliance with NASD and NYSE rules and the federal securities laws relating to retention of electronic communications. Related Links Robert Campbell and Steven Mason's article on e-mail as evidence Archive-it Mailstore and email archiving US Securities and Exchange Commission House Committee on Financial Services UK Financial Services Authority posted by Robert Campbell 12:00 PM Register your disapproval
 /We note with some dismay that one of our favorite web sites has succumed to the money and is now delivering a pop-up-ad upon every visit. The Register is the IT news source for the UK with great stories and critical comment. We realise that the publishers need to earn a crust and selling vulture T shirts isn't going to pay for the recent systems upgrades. Come on guys you must hate the pop-up as much as we do! stick to the page adverts we can cope with those. We urge everyone to write to the editor to complain Drew Cullenposted by Robert Campbell 8:57 AM Birmingham City to gag staff
 Officials at Birmingham City Council are taking a hard line approach to controlling the use of Council resources by their staff. In a report filed by IC Birmingham Paule Dale describes a draconian policy to be introduced that severly limits the use of both email and internet access by Council workers. Reasons for the clampdown are described as to minimise and manage risk, as well as to limit the drain on resources and staff efficiency.
Related links Steven Mason and Robert Campbell's article e-mail as evidenceposted by Robert Campbell 8:31 AM
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