Securing a Public Email Server

A demarcation zone or DMARC is used to separate public facing information from private internal networks. The idea is that everyone has access to the information, but if the server becomes hacked, the internal networks are protected. This approach can also be combined with a technique called a honey pot. These honey pots are simulated internal environments designed to make an easy hacking target. The idea is that the hacker attacks the easier environment, instead of going after the true internal network.

Often times a DMARC and honey pot are used for web servers. Hosting a web server on the company's network allows for more customization and control, but increases risk. DMARCs and honey pots decrease this risk. Furthermore, having the proper updated firewall behind the DMARC zone also helps prevent this risk.

Email servers are often put in the DMARC zone for several reasons. The biggest of these is is that email servers often come with a web component. This allows a employee with an email account to quickly log and check their email, even if they don't have software installed on their computer. However, this web component is susceptible to hacking attempts. Furthermore, this web component shows hackers that the email software lives there, which means that other specific attacks can be used.

Beyond putting an email server in a DMARC zone and ensuring the proper firewalls, making sure the email server is up-to-date is very important. This is because hackers will watch for security patches and then reverse engineer them to see what was fixed. They will then use these techniques to hack into all the un-patched servers. This allows the hackers a source of never ending ways to break into a forgotten email server.

Another solid strategy to protect an email server is to limit the number of ports incoming. Furthermore, limiting who can speak to those ports is also important. Allowing everyone to access every port on the server can allow the hacker to try out hacking the sub-components underneath the email server. Leaving these ports completely open to internal traffic allows a hacker to potentially hack those same components from the inside of the company. However, that latter scenario is not as likely.

A final thing to ensure is getting the proper certifications to encrypt all traffic between the email server and employees. This allows a hacker attack called "man in the middle" not to work. The idea behind "man in the middle" is that there is someone listening to the conversation between an employee and their email server. They then use the credentials they overhead to hack the server or at very least the employee's email account. While this may seem fairly difficult to do, it is actually quite common in coffee shops, airports, and other places of free public wireless. A proper certificate encrypts the data, so should an attack like this happen, the conversation between the email server and employee will be all jumbled up. The hacker would need a special key to decipher this information.

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The writer is having a vast knowledge about Dmarc checker. Hope this article has been able to provide you the kind of information that you were looking for.