A common migration scenario we are asked to help with is from GoDaddy hosted Office 365 migrating to a new clean Office 365 Tenant. GoDaddy have lots of customers, and many of them use their branded Office 365 plans for their business. This is convenient from a billing perspective, but customers soon start to hit some of the constraints from Read more
We often get asked to help with email forensic work during an email migration project. Senior leadership may require a discrete email forensic investigation carried out. The other common request related to email forensic expertise, is to provide email SMTP expert witness services. The globalemailforensics.com website provides more in-depth coverage of both these topics.
As we close off 2024 it is a good time to remind ourselves when Exchange 2016 and Exchange 2019 support ends. Microsoft have a date of October 14th 2025 for support ending for both Exchange 2016 and Exchange 2019. Microsoft recommend moving to the new Exchange version – Exchange Server Subscription Edition (SE). Exchange Server SE is not yet available, Read more
If you are running Exchange 2019 in your environment, including as part of an Exchange Hybrid setup, then you should be running the latest Exchange 2019 CU14 update. Exchange 2019 CU14 provides a number of important updates to Exchange 2019. You can download it here. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=105878 Exchange 2019 CU14 Extended Protection Feature For Exchange 2019 CU14, the Extended Protection feature Read more
TLS 1.3 was introduced back in August 2018. However, Exchange 2019 and Exchange Online do not currently support it. Windows 2022 has introduced support for TLS 1.3, but Exchange 2019 does not support it, so please do not try this as likely will cause issues for Exchange 2019. You need to remain using TLS 1.2 within Exchange 2019 and Exchange Read more
DANE support with DSSEC for Inbound SMTP Exchange Online Microsoft now support the use of SMTP DANE with DNSSEC to further secure inbound mail flow into Exchange Online. This is free for any Exchange Online licenced mailbox. Microsoft were going to only allow DANE support for E5 licenced mailboxes, but thankfully back-tracked. SMTP DANE is a new messaging security protocol Read more
DMARC is a free email authentication protection control that is used alongside SPF and DKIM. When used correctly it provides an effective security policy to help prevent malicious actors from impersonating your email addresses outside of your email system. There are increasing cyber threats against email systems, and any organization needs to be continuously improving their cyber defense against these Read more
Microsoft have made various announcements about removing the last Exchange Server from your Exchange Organisation if you have migrated all mailboxes (and mail functions) to Office 365. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/Exchange/manage-hybrid-exchange-recipients-with-management-tools This is in the context that you still have Active Directory and Azure AD Connect, with all user accounts still mastered in Active Directory. On first glance this looked very promising. If Read more
We are often asked to migrate customers off GoDaddy hosted email to a new Microsoft Office 365 (O365) Tenant. GoDaddy is widely used by customers for hosted email, as that is where they have their DNS registration for their domain names. It is easy for a GoDaddy customer to sign up for email services if they are already using that Read more
Microsoft released Exchange 2019 CU13 in May 2023. Anyone using Exchange 2019 is recommended to deploy this latest cumulative update. This is also known as the Exchange 2023 H1 update. The major feature for this release is support for Modern Authentication, with the intention to prevent the use of basic authentication. Modern Authentication will allow for MFA to be supported Read more
If you are still using a hosted email service that is based on IMAP (or POP3) it is time to consider moving onto Microsoft 365 Exchange Online, and benefit from the improved security. I have seen many customers on IMAP experiencing identity theft where user credentials have been gained, and used maliciously. A man-in-the-middle attack involving false invoicing can cost Read more
Proper use of the SPF and DKIM email authentication controls allows you to also enforce the DMARC control to significantly increase your email security posture. Adopting the desired DMARC reject mode allows you to help prevent external parties from sending spoof emails from your email domain to anyone else on the internet. Without this, those emails are likely to be Read more
Introduction | GroupWise is Alive GroupWise to Office 365 migration project requests are still coming into my inbox. This is a surprise, as GroupWise keeps on dying each year. But then these requests keep on coming. GroupWise is dead, long live GroupWise…. maybe not, but you get the idea. See an interesting view on email platform market share info here. Read more
Introduction – Office 365 Security Customers often migrate their email to MS Office 365 without considering the change in security landscape. Migrating to Office 365 offers the convenience of a cloud solution, but we recommend focusing on cloud security at the same time. Security aspects of MS Office 365 are wide ranging, but this blog post aims to introduce some Read more
Introduction Recently I was asked to help a customer remove meetings from a staff member who had left. Their Office 365 mailbox had been deleted, but the request was to have that person’s meetings removed from everyone else’s calendars. Office 365 provide this function via the Exchange Online Azure Powershell module. The result is achieved by deleting the meetings from Read more