tailieunhanh - E- Mail Virus Protection Handbook P2

E-mail is the essential killer application of the Internet. Although Webbased commerce, business to business (B2B) transactions, and Application Service Providers (ASPs) have become the latest trends, each of these technologies is dependent upon the e-mail client/server relationship. | 2 Chapter 1 Understanding the Threats Introduction E-mail is the essential killer application of the Internet. Although Webbased commerce business to business B2B transactions and Application Service Providers ASPs have become the latest trends each of these technologies is dependent upon the e-mail client server relationship. E-mail has become the telephone of Internet-based economy without e-mail a business today is as stranded as a business of 50 years ago that lost its telephone connection. Consider that 52 percent of Fortune 500 companies have standardized to Microsoft s Exchange Server for its business solutions see http reviews . Increasingly e-mail has become the preferred means of conducting business transactions. For example the United States Congress has passed the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act. Effective October 2000 e-mail signatures will have the same weight as pen-and-paper signatures which will enable businesses to close multi-billion dollar deals with properly authenticated e-mail messages. Considering these two facts alone you can see that e-mail has become critical in the global economy. Unfortunately now that businesses have become reliant upon e-mail servers it is possible for e-mail software to become killer applications in an entirely different sense if they re down they can kill your business. There is no clear process defined to help systems administrators management and end-users secure their e-mail. This is not to say that no solutions exist there are many perhaps even too many in the market-place thus the need for this book. In this introductory chapter you will learn how e-mail servers work and about the scope of vulnerabilities and attacks common to e-mail clients and servers. This chapter also provides a summary of the content of the book. First you will get a brief overview of how e-mail works and then learn about historical and recent attacks. Although .