ExchangeDefender Phishing Firewall Update
Starting in March 2023, ExchangeDefender Phishing Firewall will get a more advanced and more customizable experience.
Instead of using r.xdref.com or d.xdref.com domains in URL rewriting we will be using the service provider ID as a part of the URL, for example:
https://exchangedefender.xdref.com
As you know we introduced the ExchangeDefender Phishing Firewall to protect our clients from direct security compromises (clients being sent phishing emails) and indirect reputation issues (spammers and hackers proxying/bouncing traffic on domains that don’t correctly setup SPF/DKIM). By now the URL rewriting tech is a common industry standard used by almost all major email providers to apply clients security requirements for links in emails.
We know that nearly all security compromises start with email and being able to redirect the client to a warning page & policy enforcement engine has saved countless clients from getting compromised over the years. However, just as with all things email it’s been a challenge with other providers. URLs can be maliciously submitted, misused, cracked, and in some circumstances the ISPs have hijacked the DNS of the redirection page.
To help our clients and partners reduce the risk of this, in 2023 we’re delivering more customization and flexibility to a lot of the centralized technology we’ve used over the years. It’s a double-edged sword: new domains and hostnames take time to build up a sender reputation AND a ton of mail or misconfigured network equipment can sometimes falsely flag traffic as an attack. Our hope is that with the ability to break ExchangeDefender out into smaller modules that you can host in your own cloud or elsewhere on a public cloud will help our clients fine tune their security requirements.
Just to give you an example: We have a government client on ExchangeDefender who has a strict list of approved web sites their team can visit. Their IT manages their network and web proxies but just like any other organization they get 2FA emails, password reset links, esignature requests, links to invoices, etc. By putting ExchangeDefender Phishing Firewall in front they can sandbox unapproved links (https://theirid.xdref.com/) and police, audit, and review traffic from the cloud without it ever having a chance to compromise their network and tech. It’s the same approach used by the ExchangeDefender Inbox – hackers aren’t going to stop trying to compromise you via email so it’s really just a choice between spending time on the cleanup after getting hacked or managing the threat proactively so it doesn’t cause a problem.
Whichever route you find yourself in your cybersecurity journey, we appreciate you trusting ExchangeDefender to secure your mail flow. Huge thanks to our partner and client base for giving us a ton of feedback/ideas and helping us protect your email better.
New Release: ExchangeDefender Inbox M365 Hybrid Solution
Huge and most demanded feature from our community has finally shipped.
No more PowerShell. No manual steps. It’s all automated.
When you create a mailbox on ExchangeDefender Inbox the service creates your users M365 account, enables mail forwarding, maps the email addresses correctly, updates routing and signing.
Anyone can manage Inbox with far fewer IT skills than are needed for the most basic of M365 deployments!
We’re seeing ExchangeDefender Inbox mailboxes used in companies with high turnover, in companies that are trying to save money (Inbox could save over $300 / employee every year!), for mailboxes that get a ton of traffic but are mostly for logging (necessary but rarely ever logged in), temps, external users that need email at that domain but shouldn’t be given an entire M365 license or be exposed to all the data you have on your M365.
So.. if you’ve been keeping your own Exchange server barely alive just for these types of use case that M365 isn’t ideal for (or worth the $), let’s have a call and save some of your IT budget!
How easy is it?
Login to your ExchangeDefender Inbox admin account and choose a tenant to create a user.
ExchangeDefender Inbox does all the heavy lifting under the hood instantly. Using a combination of Remote PowerShell, Microsoft Graph, and Microsoft’s API for Exchange/M365 we’re able to create the user, setup forwarding, update address books on both sides and keep everything in sync. The admin doesn’t have to deal with any of that, they just see that it’s done:
That’s all it takes to create a mailbox and share the domain with a M365 tenant in hybrid mode. Everyone is on the same domain, everyone has the same format email address, it’s practically the same thing but saves your organization up to 95% every month.
Everything on the backend is tracked and kept in compliance. Best part – we do not use delete statements anywhere so you never have to worry about ExchangeDefender Inbox creating problems and issues at M365.
Try Inbox today for free! Login to your ExchangeDefender Admin account to get started.
Migrating from ExchangeDefender to M365
If you’re currently on ExchangeDefender (our Exchange or other email services) and migrating to M365 there are a few important steps to take to make sure everything is secure and mail moves appropriately to the new destination.
Step 1: If you’re leaving our Hosted Exchange platform
If you’re leaving our Exchange first you need to remove the domain from the Service Manager. Go to https://support.exchangedefender.com and after login click on Service Manager.
From there just select your Exchange organization and click on Delete.
You will be presented with a confirmation screen, follow the instructions and system will schedule your organization for removal from our Exchange network. Next, let’s take care of ExchangeDefender.
Step 2: Moving the ExchangeDefender pointer and MX records
When you setup your M365 Exchange service Microsoft will issue you an MX record that is typically formatted like this: DOMAIN.mail.protection.outlook.com
Go to https://admin.exchangedefender.com/domain-sp-login.php and login either as the domain administrator (userid: domain.com) or ExchangeDefender Service Provider (userid: sp) and proceed to Mail Delivery tab.
On the Mail Delivery tab you should set your mail server as “Office 365, Gmail, or multihomed MX record (3rd party MX record)” and provide your M365 MX record below.
Click Save and routing tables will be updated within the hour. In the meantime please follow these instructions to lock down your M365 tenant to only allow secure email delivery via ExchangeDefender this step is required or mail will not be delivered!
This process takes only a few minutes but it’s absolutely crucial.
That’s all you need to properly deliver mail to M365 via ExchangeDefender. If you’re not interested in securing your mail flow and protecting your M365 instance from malware & phishing you can always delete all the domains and references from ExchangeDefender.
If you run into any issues please open a support request at https://support.exchangedefender.com with the M365 MX record and M365 admin credentials and we’ll take care of the process for you.
Thank you for trusting us to secure your email.
ExchangeDefender User Security Best Practices Webinar
Every month we get a ton of new ExchangeDefender users. We work harder than others to keep you safe — and we want to get you up to speed with all the unique security benefits you get with ExchangeDefender and how to best take advantage of them.
The webinar is not overly technical AND it’s a great opportunity to get any questions you may have answered by the very people that manage ExchangeDefender. Here is what we will cover:
– How to spot and manage phishing attacks
– Importance of strong passwords
– Why you need MFA/OTP and how it works
– What to do when messages bounce
– What to do when your email is down
– How to lock down ExchangeDefender
– How to deal with spoofing and identity theft
Attacks on IT are only getting more efficient and sophisticated with each passing day – and ExchangeDefender is here to help you stay secure and adopt the best practices of our most successful partners and clients.
* First webinar in series, we will post recordings in our portal on March 1, 2023 after all the live sessions have been recorded & edited.
Register for the webinar here: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/457089402282191197
ExchangeDefender: Out with the old, in with the new
Long time no see, Vlad here with some good news among all the doom and gloom. We’re keeping our pricing the same in ’23 and we’re introducing a new service that will help you save $ in the new year.
Introducing Inbox
ExchangeDefender Inbox is an affordable email cloud service that helps you reduce your Office / M365 or Google email bills. Same domain, same email address/domain, and it works with every modern OS and mobile device. Designed to be reliable, secure, and affordable!
In a software world where everyone is seemingly raising prices, our team has been given an IKEA-like task to build an email platform that can scale, that can meet compliance and security requirements, and most importantly – still fit a budget. What we’ve built is a hybrid email service that ties into Microsoft and Google email services and allows you to offload the appropriate mailboxes onto our more affordable network (~$3/month/user).
As companies grow their reliance on email grows and their bill grows faster than their employee base because suddenly all sorts of devices, services, contractors, and vendors start requiring email access. Costs, maintenance, and management quickly spiral out of control. Inbox fixes that.
What’s so special about it?
ExchangeDefender Inbox is a secure, standards-based email service that is simple to configure with all modern operating systems and mobile devices. What makes Inbox special is the infrastructure that synchronizes your organization at ExchangeDefender and your organization that is hosted at Microsoft or Google. The email domain is the same, the email address is the same, <b>but the cost can be over 90% less than what you’re paying now.
The beauty of Inbox is its integration and simplicity. No DNS changes, no software installations or upgrades or upkeep, no long-term contracts. The entire platform is fully automated, keeping the address books on both sides in sync and enabling the users and services to operate as if they were all on the same network.
If your clients are asking you for proposals to help them save money in ’23, Inbox is the right tool for that job. Since we’ve launched it the Inbox service has been very popular with legal, medical, construction and seasonal-work franchises. We’re finding that most organizations that introduce Inbox to their service end up moving all the non-essential & non-executive users to Inbox and only leave the executives and in-house talent that requires all the M365/G-Suite functionality on the enterprise platform.
Sales pitch is surprisingly simple: if you only need to send around email we’re the more appropriate tool for the job and we’ll save you a ton of money.
Out with the old: Essentials
While we aren’t raising prices in 2022/2023, we are discontinuing some products at the end of the year. Those products are ExchangeDefender Essentials, SMS Proxy, Wrkoo Password Vault.
ExchangeDefender Essentials is a service that’s simply past it’s prime and in our opinion no longer delivers the level of security that is needed to protect an average email user. Majority of the email-borne threats are more related to phishing and malware attacks than they are to UCE, SPAM, and known viruses.
On January 1st, 2023 ExchangeDefender Essentials and ExchangeDefender Pro accounts will be reported on your invoices under the new SKU, ExchangeDefender Email Security.
What’s the difference between LiveArchive and Inbox?
Recently we blogged about ExchangeDefender Project: Inbox and we got a good amount of interest in the beta and just as many questions. We wanted to address the biggest one: What’s the difference between LiveArchive and this Inbox.
The biggest difference is that Inbox is intended to be used as a primary user mailbox, while LiveArchive is meant as a failover for a user whose mailbox is elsewhere (Exchange, M365, Gmail, etc)
Vlad Mazek, CEO of ExchangeDefender
LiveArchive is a great service to rely on when something goes wrong – Inbox on the other hand is meant to be used all the time. LiveArchive is solely a web mail service – Inbox enables you to connect Outlook or mobile devices to it. LiveArchive is a separate web service to which users usually forget credentials or only login when things go down – Inbox is integrated in the admin app and is accessible one click away from the SPAM Quarantines that our users access daily.
They are both great solutions to different IT challenges: LiveArchive for when things go wrong, Inbox for everyday email use. Inbox has one other massive advantage to it that we’ll announce later this fall.
We expect to offer both with ExchangeDefender Pro to reduce support traffic (clients mail tracking requests caused by mail server issues: “It’s in the Inbox”) and because everything in IT can fail and it’s always prudent to have a failover/backup with LiveArchive.
Introducing ExchangeDefender Inbox
Cybersecurity tops the list of IT concerns and spending, with email still being the most popular service with users and hackers alike: over 90% of compromises start with an email. If that sounds familiar you’ve undoubtedly had to deal with new email authorization standards, user training, troubleshooting mail flow, trying to figure out why email to or from certain people is bouncing, reconciling it all with new IT trends, cyber-insurance requirements, marketing. In a nutshell, email security is still a challenge and users just want something that works.
We’ve reimagined what the email security should look like in 2022 and we cannot wait to show it off:
ExchangeDefender Inbox Webinar
Wed, Sep 28, Noon EST
https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1111619875721771023
We hope you can join us for the webinar and see just how we’ve integrated all the ExchangeDefender security and productivity services to give users a single panel of glass to make email work for them even when they have issues with email. Can’t wait till next Wednesday? Shoot us a ticket at support.exchangedefender.com and ask us to enable it for you today!
ExchangeDefender Inbox combines over two decades of email security experience with the modern, mobile-first world of countless email issues. It enables our clients to get things done with email security and work through all the issues without involving IT. Users want a quick and reliable email platform that just works – work around SPAM filters, around SPF/DKIM policies, around bounces – all while leveraging email encryption to protect sensitive data. The service has been enormously popular with our enterprise clients and now we’re bringing it to all ExchangeDefender users – see you next Wednesday!
Data leaks in healthcare is the reason why millions are stolen, no security is the culprit
Most medical offices are prime targets for cybercriminals because they have little, or no security. In fact, in 2020 and 2021, 50 million people were affected by a data breach coming from their doctor’s office or other medical services. Orlando-based Cybersecurity company, 365 Defender wants to help the healthcare industry protect their patient’s data, and safeguard their businesses from online attacks.
“Phishing has become a major threat in every industry. The hardest hit has been healthcare, with about 88% of its workers having opened phishing emails on the job. To be fair, just because they opened it, doesn’t mean they fell prey to the attack. Still, having protection against today’s biggest threats are crucial for survival.” — 365 Defender CEO, Vlad Mazek
Service offerings range from email security for Outlook and Gmail, to email encryption software that can send secure messages to emails, urls, and text messages. The monthly fees are budget friendly with the cheapest service being just $5 per user, per month. There is no yearly contract commitment, giving medical offices complete flexibility to satisfy their ever-changing IT needs.
The need for data security is critical, and protecting patient privacy should be a top priority second only to healing them. To learn more about 365 Defender, and how to get started securing your company, please visit our website www.365defender.com. There is currently a 14-day free trial offer for any 365 Defender service.
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365 Defender is owned and powered by cybersecurity leader, ExchangeDefender. ExchangeDefender specializes in providing email and data security to enterprise since 1997. Headquartered in Orlando, Florida – the IT firm has just launched service plans for small business in hopes of keeping companies safe regardless of their size and budget.
Limited support for misconfigured services
ExchangeDefender provides technical support and assistance only for the domains that have been properly configured according to our deployment guides (see https://www.exchangedefender.com/docs).
To make sure your domain is properly configured please check https://check.exchangedefender.com
When the required DNS records and inbound/outbound mail isn’t configured correctly our internal troubleshooting tools fail and staff has no way to replicate or diagnose further issues — they are prohibited from guessing or offering informal suggestions as that can cause even bigger issues and cause a liability issue for everyone involved. You’ll get the same answer in the support portal, in the support web chat, and on the phone.
But Vlad!!! What if the client can’t/won’t change their DNS or deploy the service correctly?
I can respect that there is always a business case requirement for doing things the wrong way, and I’ve had plenty of arguments with clients that don’t know how ExchangeDefender relies on all these systems to deliver the best possible protection and functionality. I understand. It might even work!
Just please don’t ask us for help with it when it doesn’t work. Our staff is prohibited from guessing and making the problem even worse. It’s not a BOFH issue, it’s a legal liability issue.
-Vlad
Looking for beta testers: “Project Inbox”
We would like to invite our clients, partners, and enterprise users to a closed beta of Project: Inbox – an affordable email solution that can be used as a standalone solution or in hybrid mode with M365 and G Suite.
If you are interested, please email client.services@exchangedefender.com along with a domain name you will be using for the beta test.
Our CEO recently held a webinar explaining the strategy behind this new service and it has been evolving ever since based on market feedback. Simply put, there is a huge market for affordable mailboxes that still meet the high end security and business requirements like top of the line email security, SSO, IMAP/Outlook/Mobile access, and still use the same domain name as the more expensive Exchange or Gmail office suites.
For an overwhelming majority of users within larger organizations, email is an absolute necessity but the average cost of $150/year/employee is putting a strain on IT budgets. Furthermore, the projected slowdown in the economy will make our clients more cautious about their IT spending. Our models show a trend of more users being mobile-first (with remote work being mobile-only) and a growth of service-related mailboxes is creating an opportunity to help us improve our clients security while reducing their service bill.
If this sounds like a winning opportunity for your business or your clients we hope you’ll join us in building something new and awesome. Those that help us out will enjoy the service for free for a while but we have a limited number of spots depending on industry and seat count so if you’re even remotely interested please email us as soon as possible.
