In an age where cyber threats are growing in both sophistication and frequency, securing your email infrastructure is more important than ever. MDaemon includes a variety of tools and settings that can help administrators protect their users and connected devices from spam, malware, hacking attempts, data breaches, and email spoofing.
The MDaemon Email Server – Security Best Practices guide outlines essential recommendations and configurations. Here’s a summary of the key best practices from the guide:
🔐 Email Authentication
- Require SMTP Authentication: Ensures only users who validate their identity with a username and password can send mail.
- Use the IP Shield: Associates domains with authorized IPs to prevent spoofing & provide an extra layer of authentication.
🛡️ Data Protection
- Enable SSL/TLS: Encrypts the connection between mail clients & servers, and between mail servers & gateways.
- Use RequireTLS & MTA-STS: Enforces secure delivery paths for emails.
- PGP Encryption: Encrypts email messages between users.
🚫 Prevent Hacking & Abuse
- Block Open Relays: Prevents unauthorized email relaying, which happens when an email is neither to nor from a local user/domain.
- Enable MDaemon AntiVirus: Scans all inbound & outbound email traffic for malware using the Ikarus & ClamAV antivirus engines.
- Enable SMTP & Dynamic Screening: Blocks suspicious connection patterns and brute-force login attempts.
- Enable Account Hijack Detection: Limits outbound mail bursts to prevent spam from hijacked accounts.
- Location, IP, and Host Screening: Blocks connections from untrusted or unauthorized sources.
- Use Trusted Hosts/IPs Wisely: Only add trusted sources to bypass certain security tests.
- Enforce HTTPS for Webmail: Secures webmail sessions.
- Enable Two-Factor Authentication: Adds an extra layer of login protection.
🛡️ Spoofing Protection
- Enable Reverse DNS Lookups: Helps detect forged sender identities.
- Use SPF, DKIM, and DMARC: Standard email authentication protocols to verify senders.
- Watch our video to learn how these anti-spoofing technologies work.
- Use From Header Screening: Helps users spot spoofed emails by showing the real sender address.
📥 Spam Prevention
- Spam Filter & Spam Scoring: Utilizes SpamAssassin rules for identifying spam.
- Bayesian Learning: Trains the filter using user-submitted spam/non-spam messages.
- DNS Blocklists: Blocks known spam sources in real-time.
- Enable Automatic Spam Filter Updates: Keeps spam definitions current.
- Spambot Detection: Blocks mass spam senders using multiple IPs.
- Spamhaus DQS: A paid service that blocks up to 99% of threats.
- Outbreak Protection: Detects and stops threats using pattern analysis even before antivirus signatures are updated.
When combined, these features form a comprehensive security framework that helps protect MDaemon mail servers from a wide range of email-borne threats.
🔗 Download the Full Guide (PDF):
MDaemon Email Server – Security Best Practices
Need help? Reach out to our MDaemon support team or visit www.mdaemon.com for more information.
