Thursday, June 27, 2013

Windows XP End of Support

Greetings ! As you may be probably aware , the support for Windows XP officially ends on 8 April 2014. As a user , what does it mean to you? I will try and answer few of those questions:  

Security Issues

Post 8 April 2014, any security vulnerability which is discovered , will not be patched. So the unpatched Computer will be open to infection . And an infected machine will then most likely infect other Computers in the network. So if your Computer is in a network or is connected to Internet , then using such a PC is a big risk. However , if you are not connected to the Internet and working as a Standalone PC, then the risk is minimal.  

Driver Support

You may say that even if Microsoft does not issue a security patch , you have a third party anti virus to protect you. The bad news is that these products will not be tested for XP. Your other applications also will not be tested for XP post the deadline. So over time, the XP machines are likely to become unstable . And new applications will simply not work on XP.  

Solution

You should consider to move to a current computer with a current operating system. And with imminent launch of Windows 8.1, it will be the ideal time to upgrade your PC . Of course, you do have Windows 8 PC available even today. In fact , more than 100 million Windows 8 licenses have been sold so far.  However , if you are still reluctant to dump Windows XP, then at least ensure that

 a) It is not connected to Internet

b) It is not connected to other computers

Wish you Happy and Safe Computing !


with warm regards

Suresh Ramani www.TechGyan.com

Blog: www.CloudChangesEverything.com

















Thursday, June 6, 2013

What is Email Journaling

 

Greetings !

Email is by far the most important mode of Business Communication. Most of the businesses would simply come to a stand still if Email is banned from use. However , Email is also a source of Data Leakage in an Organization. Hence Companies need to implement processes to minimize the data leakage via Email. One such effective method of minimizing data leakage is Journaling.

 

What is Email Journaling

Simply put , for every mail which is received or sent by any user in an Organization, a copy is generated and mailed to a pre defined mail box. The access to this Journal Mailbox is restricted. One can define the users to be covered by Email Journaling. The best way is to cover all users . Democracy !

 

How does Journaling differ from Archiving

Journaling is the ability to record email communications, in an organization

Archiving refers to backing up the data, removing it from its native environment, and storing it elsewhere, therefore reducing the strain of data storage.

Journal Rules and scope

The following are key aspects of journal rules:

•Journal rule scope Defines which messages are journaled by the Journaling agent.

•Journal recipient Specifies the SMTP address of the recipient you want to journal.

•Journaling mailbox Specifies one or more mailboxes used for collecting journal reports.

Note:

In Office 365, the maximum number of journal rules you can create is 10.

Journal rule scope

You can use a journal rule to journal only internal messages, only external messages, or both. The following list describes these scopes:

•Internal messages only Journal rules with the scope set to journal internal messages sent between the recipients inside your Exchange organization.

•External messages only Journal rules with the scope set to journal external messages sent to recipients or received from senders outside your Exchange organization.

•All messages Journal rules with the scope set to journal all messages that pass through your organization regardless of origin or destination. These include messages that may have already been processed by journal rules in the Internal and External scopes.

Journal recipient

You can implement targeted journaling rules by specifying the SMTP address of the recipient you want to journal. These recipients may be subject to regulatory requirements, or they may be involved in legal proceedings where email messages or other communications are collected as evidence. By targeting specific recipients or groups of recipients, you can easily configure a journaling environment that matches your organization's processes and meets regulatory and legal requirements. Targeting only the specific recipients that need to be journaled also minimizes storage and other costs associated with retention of large amounts of data.

All messages sent to or from the journaling recipients you specify in a journaling rule are journaled. If you specify a distribution group as the journaling recipient, all messages sent to or from members of the distribution group are journaled. If you don't specify a journaling recipient, all messages sent to or from recipients that match the journal rule scope are journaled.

Journaling mailbox

The journaling mailbox is used to collect journal reports. How you configure the journaling mailbox depends on your organization's policies, regulatory requirements, and legal requirements. You can specify one journaling mailbox to collect messages for all the journal rules configured in the organization, or you can use different journaling mailboxes for different journal rules or sets of journal rules.

Important:

You can't designate an Office 365 mailbox as a journaling mailbox for on-premises mailboxes. If you’re running a hybrid deployment with your mailboxes split between on-premises servers and Office 365, you can designate an on-premises mailbox as the journaling mailbox for your Office 365 and on-premises mailboxes.

 

Usage Scenarios

To meet an increasing number of regulatory and compliance requirements, many organizations must maintain records of communications that occur when employees perform daily business tasks.

For eg. corporate officers in some financial sectors may be held liable for the claims made by their employees to their customers. To verify that the claims are accurate, a corporate officer may set up a system where managers review some part of employee-to-client communications regularly

Another usage is to have a backup of all Emails . Some Customers in fact do not take backup of individual users. They only backup Journal Mailbox .

 

So how does one setup Email Journaling

Here’s how we have setup Journaling in our Company. First we create a group containing the members whose mails need to be journaled. The group name is AllUsers as seen below:

clip_image001

Once the rule is enabled , then the magic begins. What you see below is the Distribution Group AllUsers whose members have been defined as per previous snapshot.

clip_image003

Now you are good to go. Given below is the snap shot of Outlook one of the users  :

clip_image004

The same mail has also been sent to Journal mailbox which has been created on Outlook.com which has also collected mails from other users:

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I do hope that you have understood the importance of Journaling. Get started today. You need to implement the same at the earliest !

with warm regards

Suresh Ramani

www.TechGyan.com

Blog: www.CloudChangesEverything.com