The best antivirus software for small business
There are tons of Antivirus software to choose from and finding the right solution for your business can be complicated. ExchangeDefender can help in assisting SMBs to make the right decision.
What makes a good Antivirus?
Any Anti-virus will do just that, to some degree, that is to fights viruses and other malicious software. Maintaining your personal identification and safeguarding your privacy goes well beyond standard virus protection. SMB’s must understand the difference between an average antivirus protection and outstanding antivirus protection. Don’t rely on just the antivirus that’s built-in to your computer applications.
The difference between good and GREAT
What makes a great Antivirus? A multithread and multi-layered protection approach scanning incoming data. Remember extra, matters – especially if they are within budget.
A few must-haves when selecting Antivirus protection:
- Real-time Protection against viruses, trojans, malware, spyware, and adware.
- Cloud based, User control, Firewall protection
- An Antivirus that works well with others, i.e., MaC, iPhone, and Android
- Attachment blocking and attachment policy management
- Stops identity theft by blocking phishing attempts
This is where ExchangeDefender comes in with our top-selling advanced security suite known as ExchangeDefender PRO. ExchangeDefender possesses enterprise-grade email security suite offering multi-level protection against email-borne attacks. It not only provides exceptional virus protection, but also, phishing, spoofing, attachment blocking, Fraud prevention and so much more.
Our commercial antivirus engines use up to six antivirus engines to scan each incoming message
Cyber attacks continue to rise in 2021
Cyberattacks are here to stay and data breaches are on the rise as we come into the new year, affecting business owners with financial loss, brand damage, and legal ramifications. It is imperative for businesses of all sizes to prevent data breaches. ExchangeDefender’s high Throttled Malware & Trojan Control – has a built-in identification system that tracks the message & attachment MD5 checksums and responds by temporarily delaying messages that match the bulk-mail criteria.
Malware Attachment Filtering & Sanitation is a must – The days of text-only SPAM are long gone. Today SPAM is distributed as a PDF, zip file, image, even an audio file! At the same time, we use our email as more of a file sharing mechanism than a communications platform. Subsequently, it is essential to understand the attachment type and what type of a threat it poses. ExchangeDefender analyzes attachments on multiple layers, using checks for file names, file types, MIME headers and archives to properly protect you from all dangerous content.
From a business perspective, your brand reputation could be on the line, a solid Anti-virus software service would prove essential to protect your company’s, files, systems, and sensitive data.
To learn more about ExchangeDefender’s advanced email security suite,
please click here.
Cybersecurity challenges facing our nation in 2021
The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic and recent presidential election turmoil notwithstanding, cybersecurity remains one of the most non-political, bi-partisan challenges facing our nation in 2021. It doesn’t matter if you are a government organization or a private sector company, a non-profit or a for-profit, a Fortune 500 or an unfortunate 5000, everyone is being challenged daily to deal with the fervent bombardment of cybersecurity attacks on governments, businesses, and ordinary people.
While we’ve been on the cyber-defensive with nation-state, and high level cyber-criminals for decades, the executive branch of the federal government’s response has wobbled, staggered, and lurched in spastic fits that has essentially paralyzed any consistent national direction.
Most critical of all, there has been no clear guidance to the nation on exactly what is the federal government’s role in cybersecurity. Twenty years ago, dealing with foreign attacks were the sole responsibility of the federal government. Today, every private sector company, big and small, and every government organization—federal, state and local—find themselves outmatched and under-resourced in an unfair battle defending themselves against nations and organizations with far more dedicated assets.
As overwhelming as these new trends may be, there are steps to mitigate some of the financial challenges SMB’s are facing. Companies can invest in an affordable email protection in conjunction with sound business practices without breaking the bank.
Cybersecurity tips for 2021
Try reducing your organizations reliance solely on passwords and add Multi-factor authentication to ensure only authorized users gain access. Introduce technical security solutions with the use of “throttling” or account lock outs. Ensure that all corporate web applications require authentication use HTTPS. Enlist a password management software, such a WRKOO or other secure storage. Implement a disaster recovery plan that includes email continuity. ExchangeDefender offers Email outage protection that is flexible to fit you company’s needs. The service is quick and easy to setup. There are no software installations, and no manual switches. The easy part is that there is no management or maintenance required. ExchangeDefender’s Live Archive solution is designed to keep your organization in business whenever a disaster strikes. It provides continuous email communications regardless of internal network outages. Our service helps businesses preserve their brand and reputation while ensuring a reliable email continuity plan.
ExchangeDefender OAuth Implementation
ExchangeDefender is starting 2021 with a subtle yet huge change in the way our applications and services interact on the backend – we have fully implemented OAuth. OAuth is a popular authentication / login framework that uses authorization tokens instead of passwords to grant you access to different/unrelated services.
What this means in practical terms is that once you login to ExchangeDefender, you will be authorized to access all of the applications you have access to without logging in again and again as you hop from your SPAM Quarantine to your Password Vault to Wrkoo Invoices or ExchangeDefender support.
It also means you are now able to use authenticator apps from Google, Microsoft, as well as SMS. We are already working on Microsoft Authenticator, and for users that don’t trust big tech, Authy.
What will it look like?
Deployment of OAuth is completely transparent to the user and their login experience will not change. We are currently running OAuth in an open beta with our larger MSPs and enterprise customers and the login screen looks like this:
After you login with your username and password, you will be taken to our OAuth enrollment screen where you will be prompted for your password again (or prompted to reset it, if it’s older than 90 days).
That’s all. You’ll be enrolled in OAuth and from that point on your access to all our sites and services will be handled with authentication tokens instead of passwords.
After you’re authenticated, your avatar in the upper right hand side will feature shortcuts to the rest of the ExchangeDefender/Wrkoo/Own Web Now sites you have access to and they’ll be just a click away. This implementation will help us streamline access to all of the services the user is authorized to access, making it much easier to access all the services without dealing with multiple portals, sites, and login credentials.
P.S. I have blogged repeatedly imploring our partners and clients to adopt better password policies and two-factor authentication. Truth is, no matter how amazing and unique your password is, it’s passing through series of potentially compromised routers and networks. Even though ExchangeDefender offers free 2FA, OTP, and requires strong passwords with option to automatically expire them – the adoption rate is still under 10%.
Beta Release: ExchangeDefender SMS Relay
More and more, we’re prompted for our cell phone number – not for marketing, but for functional purposes. Web sites are using your cell number to text you a verification code, password reminders can’t even start without texting you – even the local restaurant will text you when your table is available. Everyone has a cell phone on them all the time and it’s the most convenient way to reach you.
The convenience stops abruptly when cell phones are used in a corporate or collaborative environment.
“Whose number ends in -2910?
I’m waiting for the OTP from Intuit!
Which phone are we using for 2FA for XYZ Inc?”
Over the years we’ve used various apps, services, even burner phones for 2FA/OTP purposes. When we got sent home by Covid-19, everyone felt the immediate sting of signing into services from a new computer. Managing apps, forwarding services and automation scripts that were at times delayed or hit and miss was just not tolerable.
At the same time, we were integrating our wildly successful Email Encryption with TXT (for secure message delivery) and this seemed like a natural extension. Pretty soon we were SMS-enabling everything in our organization and finally having a layer of reporting and management that is critical.
How to enroll?
Just go to our portal at https://support.ExchangeDefender.com and click on SMS Proxy.
At launch, we’re making it available with local numbers in United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia. Once you pick your number you can add team members to it and you’re done. Every message sent to that number will be copied to other members of your team. It’s like a distribution group, but with cell phones – and you can have up to 5 people assigned to each number. Numbers are just $5 / month and include 100 inbound messages.
We’ve already got it working with a ton of different services (email, Slack, Teams) and we look forward to launching next and exciting services in 2021.
Beta Release: ExchangeDefender SMS Relay
2020 lineup of all ExchangeDefender new releases
Let’s face it – 2020 has been a challenging year. Reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses are fighting to emerge from the epidemic with a sense of determination and newly found resilience. SMB’s have realized the journey to recovery and reinvention continues.
As this turbulent year concludes, now would be a good time to reflect on some of the more positive aspects, by noting ExchangeDefender’s 2020 upgraded features and solutions that were provided launched this year for our clients. Let’s take a look at 2020 in review:
Wrkoo – Client Support Software for Service Providers
2020 was Wrkoo’s first year in full production and it could not have come at a better time. The pandemic has forced many of us to work differently, straying from our typical office environment and weekly meetings.
We offered, (and are still offering) Wrkoo absolutely free to small businesses, and to our fellow service providers who are trying to keep their business sailing as smooth as possible, despite the current affairs. Approximately 25% of our partners currently use Wrkoo to run their business, and offer seamless client support with Wrkoo. We felt like it was a no-brainer to offer our client support software for free to keep small businesses (like ours) alive. Btw, we use Wrkoo too – have been for years! You can signup for free, here!
Service Manager for Exchange 2016
The full migration to Exchange 2016 proved to be extremely challenging, but with much success we managed to move ALL our clients hosted with us to the new platform. One of the highlighted changes is that you can access your service manager inside our support portal via support.ownwebnow.com.
Exchange 2016 Distribution Group Management
Due to popular demand, we created the ability to manage Distribution Groups and External Contacts for Exchange 2016 via our Service Manager located inside the support portal.
ExchangeDefender User Sync Upgrade
ExchangeDefender User Sync Upgrade feature recently got a major upgrade to function with our new cloud infrastructure. This is our favorite way to enroll ExchangeDefender users for two reasons: it is simple and seamless to onboard new users.
Broadcast Messaging
The introduction of Broadcast messages was also hit! ExchangeDefender Broadcast Messages are easy, automated, and free. Partners now can reach all users in their organization using broadcast messages. To use the feature, you’ll need to login to the admin portal with your SP account, learn how.
Web File Server UI Upgrade
Web File Server received a second light upgrade due to the high demands of clients currently power-using its file sharing application. WFS is designed to combine the power of old-fashioned file servers with the security, productivity, and collaboration demands of modern web applications. Web File Server is ultimately about productivity and is designed as a service where clients can collaborate and share their document libraries with staff or external recipients. Take the tour!
ExchangeDefender a-la-carte offerings
Moving-on to the ever-popular Rise of “a la carte” offerings at ExchangeDefender. As of June 2020, we offer solutions to be sold individually without ExchangeDefender or mail going through to us at all. These solutions include: ExchangeDefender PRO, Live Archive, Compliance Archiving, Corporate Encryption, and Web File Server.
“Bypass” Disposable Email Addresses
Earlier this year, we created disposable email addresses (available for free) to help users get around some of our security protocols. The most common scenarios are misconfigured SPF/DKIM domains, strict organization policies that wont allow certain attachments etc. You can setup as many disposable addresses as you wish, they can be created and deleted at any time.
Feedback Loop Reporting
The new SPAM Reporting feature enables users to report SPAM messages that get delivered to their inbox in real-time, learn more. The Feedback loop signature settings are located inside the ExchangeDefender Admin portal, please Login as the domain administrator, click on Mail Delivery > SPAM Feedback Loop.
Next Gen Live Archive
Everyone loves New Gen technology! And that was exactly what ExchangeDefender produced with the Next Gen Live Archive. The new LA is now a webmail not dependent on Exchange, Gmail or other major email providers. To understand the full scope of the product, see here!
Corporate Encryption
New SMS & Secure Texting Feature shares sensitive information by text message with Corporate Encryption. The new feature has been added along with others, in the new release of our Encryption service that offer users the ability to easily send, and receive encrypted messages via email, url, or text message. It is easy to use, can auto-detect sensitive data, and offers real-time reporting.
Mobile phones (BYOD) have become so prevalent for work, especially with COVID-19 that has caused many of us to change the way we work. The use of our cell phone as a means of productivity is fully recognized. In response, ExchangeDefender provides additional security with 2FA/OTP to enable users to securely share information with clients and colleagues on-the-go.
Hands down, Corporate Encryption has been one of our best sellers. The restructure of the encryption portal was driven solely to enhance the user experience. The Encryption Portal gives users central access to all encryption messages, contacts, advanced encryption options groups, SMS, URL and full audit log.
There you have it – ExchangeDefender has been actively engaged to ensure our partners are provided the latest products and services available.
Q4 company updates, and a message from Vlad
ExchangeDefender security solutions experienced a burst in demand that has not let up, and neither has our development output. I’ve been involved in the strategy and our roadmap more than I’ve been in several years and I wanted to give you an informal update on some of our awesome projects and Q4 progress before we turn our attention to 2021. Hopefully we can help you.
Encryption
Encryption has been an undisputed heavyweight champion of sales in 2020 and we’ve heavily invested into the service that is now being used by our clients to secure everything from email stock trade notifications to doctor office sms/txt delivery of lab results. The ability to sell this product a-la-carte without ExchangeDefender (or MX/DNS changes) has significantly expanded our market and reach, while the ability to encrypt and distribute messages via web and sms/txt to mobile devices has opened up the application and use case scenarios exponentially. The demand for the product has not slowed down, and we’re already working on the 3rd update to this service in a year.
The bad news is that due to the demand we’ll stop partner training on December 1st, and Encryption sales will officially stop for 2020 on December 11th (expected to resume in late January 2021). We have a very large enterprise and government presence where most of the contracts, deployment, and projects happen in late December (and with Covid / office / travel restrictions our schedule is already packed).
XD Updates
We are making significant upgrades to our core ExchangeDefender features, and most of them are focused around productivity and management efficiency. For example, we’re starting our ExchangeDefender Outlook/OWA Addin beta later this month. We’re simplifying the way for you to implement and manage DKIM, SPF, and DMARC. We’re launching some other exciting features as an addon pack, which should help many organizations that need better controls to police notifications, confirmations, spear phishing attempts, and full transport rules. Where we’re in highest demand at ExchangeDefender is professional email services, where we’re brought in to assist with a specific email problem. Over the past year we’ve been hired to run mail audits, security audits, insurance company hired us to double-check in house IT, we’ve built several SMS/txt/email gateways, and almost on the hourly basis: security protocol implementations. It’s getting to the point that business email delivery and issue troubleshooting is a full time job. The future of cybersecurity looks bright!
Exchange Essentials
Because business is ultimately about making money, we’ve been pressed to return the Exchange Essentials service. Listen, I understand it, budgets are going to be tougher in 2021 and everyone is going to need an affordable but secure Exchange experience. Even if cuts aren’t crucial, for some organizations it makes sense to spend IT budgets elsewhere other than a $15 mailbox (most people these days spend their time in Outlook on their phone than on the desktop)
We’re bringing Exchange Essentials back at $4.99 for a limited time.
P.S. This is gonna sell out by Christmas, so if you have an opportunity and need us to hold some seats please call us at 877-546-0316, and let us know.
Wrkoo
We decided to give Wrkoo Startup away for free with no limits when we were first looking to shut down our offices in March — we knew small businesses were not prepared for an extended “work from home” and that keeping everyone informed was on every managers mind. We gave Wrkoo away for free to everyone that worked with our partners, everyone that had ExchangeDefender, and aggressively promoted it here in Orlando because we wanted to help our community. We are truly all in this together because small businesses depend on each other. This is a rather expensive marketing write-off, but we’ve pledged to keep it free through at least one quarter after the USA gets vaccines.
Through this time we’ve heard from people who are using Wrkoo to provide customer service, to send out invoices, to track time, to manage entire projects, we have a translation service that runs on it, and a business vertical of every kind. And with ExchangeDefender we keep on connecting business productivity with the way people actually work and communicate when they need to get stuff done. We couldn’t be happier to have been a part in someone getting their business together in the cloud. Throughout all this mess, Wrkoo is the way we keep everyone accountable and on the same page. I know it can do the same for your business, or recommend it to a friend.
Corporate Encryption Upgrade – What Did We Change?
The restructure of the encryption portal was driven solely to enhance the user experience. The ExchangeDefender Encryption Portal gives users central access to all encryption messages, contacts, advanced encryption options groups, SMS, URL as well as a full audit log. All available from a secure site, available via desktop and mobile.
Let’s take a look at what’s new:
For Contacts, we have made it easy to be more productive by saving contacts you often send messages to.
Click, Create New Contact and provide the name and email address. It is that simple.
Basic vs. High Security
Primarily High Security requires the recipient to create a profile to ensure the message is not compromised by a 3rd party. We strongly encourage the use of High Security. Basic Security also provides end-to-end encryption, but does not require the recipient to register with ExchangeDefender.
Advanced Options are located on the right hand side of your screen, these features were created to enhance the user experience and to offer more flexibility for the user.
- Automatically destroy the message after # days.
- Notify this user when the recipient reads this message
- Password protect this message
- Notify me when the recipient reads this message
- Actions allowed for recipients: Allow Reply/Forward or to Print
Groups
ExchangeDefender Encryption also supports groups. You can add contacts to a group by clicking on +Create New Group and providing information about your contacts. At any time, you can also click on the + icon next to the group name to +Add more members or click on the red X button to remove from the group.
Send encrypted messages via URL (Website)
ExchangeDefender Encryption enables you to send encrypted messages to web sites and services while maintaining the security and custody of the message contents.
The system generates a short URL that can be copied and pasted into Slack, Teams, Facebook, social media, or any other web site. URL Encrypted Messages are the most popular features as it provides a secure authentication layer, automatically deletes contents, and provides tracking. Simply type your subject, message, attach documents and click Send and a dialog box will pop up with the link to the message. You can copy and paste this link and everyone with the access to it.
Send encrypted messages via SMS
Send encrypted messages to mobile devices via SMS / text messages. This feature is highly sought after by doctors, attorneys and insurance personnel that are frequently interacting with clients that are on the move. “We’ll just text it to you” is an easy way to deliver a secure message via the recipient’s mobile phone number.
The recipient receives an SMS message with a link to the secure encrypted message. They will click the link, the default web browser on the phone will go to the secure SSL-encrypted web site to show message contents.
Internationalization
ExchangeDefender encryption portal has adopted Internationalization by designing the portal to be adaptive to various regions without engineering changes.
Audit Log
Every action related to encryption is listed here and reflects what was done even after the messages are gone.
To learn more about ExchangeDefender Corporate Encryption, click here.
ExchangeDefender Whitelist vs. DEA (Disposable Email Addresses)
ExchangeDefender is a cloud-based email firewall, and as such we enforce client’s policies against the only email address that is trustworthy: the envelope from address.
Over the past few years there has been a significant increase in use of disposable email addresses (DEA), specifically among mass/bulk mailing operations such as SendGrid, AmazonSES, MailJet, SMTP2Go, SocketLabs, Postmark, Mandrill, Mailgun, MailChimp, ConstantContact, etc. These email addresses, also known as “dark mail” create a unique email address to serve as the official From: line, in an effort to track bounces and delivery problems. Every time you get an email from one of these mass mailing operations the address the message actually came from is unique and generated just for that email/campaign – so whitelisting/blacklisting such addresses can be a challenge for clients that do not use ExchangeDefender’s admin portal or quarantine reports (which detect BATS/DEA addresses and auto-suggest the domain or IP to create a policy).
Bulk mail operations are not just used for mass marketing mail, where companies large and small do not want to build out the infrastructure to deliver tons of email. They are used for notifications, alerts, and most legitimate junk mail that you get. Unfortunately, the same companies are abused in virtually the same way by hackers to deliver spear phishing content. Because the body/header From: address can be easily faked, hackers hide behind places such as SendGrid, AmazonSES. Because they are highly automated, there is relatively little in the way of policing on these networks: after all, they make money to deliver junk mail to you and have little incentive to keep SPAM and phishing content from being sent through their networks.
Over the years, we’ve taught countless MSPs and IT people the difference between the “envelope from” (routing address) and “header or body from” (fake, but friendly looking From address displayed in your email software like Gmail or Outlook). As our client base has changed over the years, we’ve decided to write up an intro-level explanation of the process and how to master it. You can find it here:
https://www.exchangedefender.com/docs/whitelist
We hope you can use it to better block or permit access to these operations. If you’d like our assistance with this process, please open a ticket at https://support.ExchangeDefender.com and remember to attach the .eml file and/or full headers which are required for troubleshooting.
For our pro subscribers, stay tuned. We’ve been hard at work on our antispam engine enhancements and we’ll have a friendlier way to manage this by Thanksgiving 2020.
Corporate Encryption: How to compose an encrypted message
Our new user-friendly interface makes sending and receiving encrypted messages a breeze. The redesign really focused on the end user, and how the software would be used on a daily basis. We made sure to include flexible options to be able to securely share sensitive information to a Contact, or a group of Contacts all at once.
Option 1: Sending an encrypted message by email
There are a few ways to send an encrypted message with ExchangeDefender. The first being the traditional way – typing in the email dress of your recipient, adding the subject of the message, along with any attachments, and clicking Send.
From your Dashboard, the steps would look like this: Inbox > Compose email button > New Message.
Option 2: Sending an encrypted message by URL
The second option in sending encrypted messages is highly customizable which includes the ability to send secure message by URL, or by text message. As of right now, ExchangeDefender offers the only omnichannel solution for message encryption allowing you to send messages securely to web services as well as mobile devices via SMS.
ExchangeDefender Encryption enables you to send encrypted messages to web sites and services while maintaining top security of your sensitive information.
How does it work?
The system generates a short URL that can be copied and pasted into Slack, Teams, Facebook, social media, or any other web site or service. URL Encrypted Messages are among the most popular features of ExchangeDefender Encryption because it provides a secure authentication layer, automatically deletes the content, and provides advanced tracking.
How do you generate the shareable secure link?
The process is exactly the same as sending a message to an email address, group, or mobile device. First, be sure to select the URL button, then type your subject, message, add an attachment (optional) and click Send.
Once you click the Send button, a pop-up form will appear with the link to your secure message. You can copy and paste this link to the contacts whom you wish to have access.
Option 3: Sending an encrypted message by SMS Message
“We’ll just text it to you” is an easy way to deliver a secure message while still keeping the contents in your custody in your secure Inbox. ExchangeDefender Encryption enables you to send encrypted messages to mobile devices via SMS / text messages.
Sending a secure message to the mobile device is same as sending any other encrypted message through ExchangeDefender encryption – with one important difference – you only need to know the recipients mobile phone number.
Simply, tap the Compose
Email button, then select SMS tab to create an encrypted message with
SMS delivery.
The recipient will receive an SMS message with the link to the secure encrypted
message. When they click on it, the default web browser on the phone will go to
the secure SSL-encrypted web site and show them the message and contents.
Please note: SMS messages and URL messages only support Basic Security encryption because they are not sent to an email address that could be used as a login. Please make sure that you enforce tight expiration window, and please setup a password to minimize the chance of unauthorized access.
ExchangeDefender Corporate Encryption – SMS & Secure Texting Feature
We recently won a very large financial institution contract with our ExchangeDefender Corporate Encryption by solving a not-so-unique problem many businesses have with their encryption solution:
“It’s a disaster. I spend more time resending encrypted messages or walking clients through how to access forms than I do on actual processing.”
This is what we heard over and over – email encryption solutions are ugly, not intuitive, not very user friendly, and half the time they get lost somewhere along the way. If your business has a loan officer doing email support, your email encryption is not working for your business.
“Sometimes we just text them parts of it blurred out so we can move ahead until they come into our branch.”
What if you could text them, but securely?
Mobile phones have become so ubiquitous that they are already being used a secondary security credential (via 2 factor authentication or OTP) – and now ExchangeDefender enables you to rely on them to securely grant access to confidential or sensitive information
ExchangeDefender makes this easy by allowing you to simply send anything you need to handle securely to your clients phone via SMS/text. And to do so while being even more secure than with email. Unlike email, that multiple people (from admin to IT) have access to, only you have access to your phone. Nobody else, with your credentials, can snoop on that. So compose a message, type in a phone number and send them the link to the document and attachments securely.
But ExchangeDefender Corporate Security makes that even better and more safe. First, you can password protect the message and either give them in a call or using other means. You can even make sure that they cannot share it or that it would get compromised later – just set the message to expire after it’s been viewed.
And of course you will be alerted when they actually click on the link and access your message.
You can even track it.
ExchangeDefender Corporate Encryption is truly enabling multi-platform secure sharing of secret, sensitive, and personally identifiable information. With our SMS/text feature, you can now reach people on their mobile devices and get them secure access to the information without an app or without dealing with their email issues. Best of all, your message never leaves you, the clients only get the link – so if you made a mistake, you can revoke and destroy the message immediately.
This level of secure messaging and audit trail is unprecedented – and now you can say “I’ll just text it to you, but securely. Password is encryption and it will auto-destroy after you pick it up.”
