Implementing Email Security with Exchange Server 2003 (Feb 11)
Has anyone ever considered Email Security (S/MIME) within their Exchange Server 2003 network environment? As complex as it was to configure with earlier versions of Exchange Server, now it’s equally easy to implement with Exchange Server 2003. The only requirement is a Windows Server 2003 certificate authority with configured automatic certificate enrollment.
If you have successfully configured Email Security your users will have the ability to send and receive signed and encrypted email.
View full article: Implementing Email Security with Exchange Server 2003
4 Security Bulletins (Feb 10)
Critical
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-004 – Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (832894)
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-007 – ASN .1 Vulnerability Could Allow Code Execution (828028)
Important
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-006 – Vulnerability in the Windows Internet Naming Service (WINS) Could Allow Code Execution (830352)
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-005 – Vulnerability in Virtual PC for Mac could lead to privilege elevation (835150) (Macintosh only)
Visio Downloads (Feb 10)
Visio 2003 Update: KB831925
This update addresses a problem where Visio 2003 overwrites some registry settings for msxml2.dll and msxml3.dll. The problem may prevent applications utilizing these files from running properly.
Visio 2003 Software Development Kit (SDK)
The Visio 2003 SDK contains sample applications, code librarian code snippets, documentation, and tools, including the ShapeStudio, Event Monitor, Persistent Events, Print ShapeSheet, and Solution Publishing tools.
Visio Viewer 2002
The Visio Viewer 2002 allows you to distribute drawings and diagrams to team members, partners, customers, or others without requiring that they have Visio installed on their computers.
Office 2003 SP1 Enhancements (Feb 10)
We’ve received information about future enhancements for Office 2003. Office 2003 SP1 which is currently planned for release in late May will include fixes/improvements for all applications in the Office 2003 suite with some big enhancements for InfoPath 2003.
Microsoft are adding the ability for custom controls, active x controls that can be made available in InfoPath’s control tasks pane as well as other improvements throughout InfoPath. Details are unclear on what enhancements will be made in other applications like Word and Outlook at the moment. See below for the InfoPath improvements. Details for other Office applications coming soon.
View: Office 2003 SP1 Enhancements Screenshots
Added Content: Create your own fully customized Toolbar (Feb 9)
Subscribers to my newsletter already received this guide in their mailboxes last week. Click here if you also want to receive the latest news around Microsoft Office and tips for Outlook in your mailbox.
View: Create your own fully customized Toolbar
Clueless office workers help spread computer viruses (Feb 9)
Busy or apathetic employees are accelerating the spread of viruses and potentially costing UK businesses millions in clean-up charges, according to a survey out today.
Two-thirds of the 1,000 people quizzed by market researchers TNS in January admit they are not aware of even the most basic virus prevention measures. Meanwhile a third of those polled in the Novell-sponsored study said they are too busy to check their emails before opening them.
Depressingly, nine in ten of the workers quizzed believe that have no part to play in preventing the spread of viruses, preferring to leave responsibility to “their IT department, Microsoft or the government”.
Where does Novell find these lunk heads? UK office workers, that’s who.
Even allowing for the fact the survey took place in the first two weeks of January – before the ongoing MyDoom pandemic – one would think that most people would have a fair idea of what a virus-infected email might look like. Not so – two thirds of the respondents to the survey said they didn’t have a clue.
View full article: Clueless office workers help spread computer viruses
E-Mail: Outlook Rules (Feb 9)
According to a recent survey by Osterman Research — a company focused on understanding corporate messaging, e-mail, and collaboration issues — Microsoft Outlook continues its dominance of the e-mail world.
The survey found that 61.4 percent of all employees (the sample space was 320) use Microsoft Outlook most often as their e-mail client at work. Lotus Notes was a distant second at 19.4 percent. Third place was Novell GroupWise at 9.1 percent.
The picture changed only slightly at the enterprise (above 1,000 employees) level, with 58 percent using Outlook most often, followed by 26.4 percent using Lotus Notes.
Michael Osterman of Osterman Research says that Outlook “has become the desktop of choice.” But Microsoft’s domination may not be as complete as the survey shows, given that Osterman points out that companies can use Outlook with a Lotus back end. “Companies like Rockliffe, Scalix, Bynari, and Stalker Software can replace the back end,” he says. Based on another survey done a few months ago, Osterman found out that 55 percent of companies would be willing to change their e-mail client if they could keep their existing front end. Given that there are some users of Outlook now two generations behind, in 5.5., this could be a selling opportunity, reiterates Osterman.
Despite Outlook’s overall dominance, Osterman notes that are plenty of environments in which Lotus might be more attractive. “Exchange is primarily a messaging system that can do some applications, and Notes is an application development framework that does messaging,” he summarizes. “For a company interested in custom applications at a workgroup level, Notes is the way to go.”
View: E-Mail: Outlook Rules
Microsoft Online Seminars: Microsoft Exchange (Feb 9)
See how to maximize your business potential with Microsoft solutions. Seminars are learning resources designed to meet the needs of developers, IT professionals, and business decision makers.
Download: Microsoft Online Seminars: Microsoft Exchange
Windows XP Professional, Windows Mobile 2003, and Office Professional Edition 2003 for a Mobile Workforce Whitepaper (Feb 9)
Microsoft mobile solutions enable collaboration through communication. These solutions enable all of the mobility scenarios that this whitepaper describes by using systems with which you are already familiar, including Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003, Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, Microsoft Windows® XP Professional, and Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003. This white paper describes these solutions, including the key elements, investments, and decisions you must make in order to implement them in your organization.
Project Server 2003 Updated Guides (Feb 9)
Project Server 2003 Configuration Planning Guide
This guide helps you to understand the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) solution in great detail, including the applications and components that make up the EPM solution, their integration points, performance implications, and environmental considerations.
Project Server 2003 Application Configuration Guide
This guide outlines what you need to know about configuring the Enterprise Global Template and populating the Enterprise Resource Pool.
SharePoint Products and Technologies 2003 Software Development Kit (SDK) (Feb 9)
Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies uses a common set of Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 services named Windows® SharePoint Services, to take advantage of the performance, stability, and security features of the Microsoft .NET Framework. Use Windows SharePoint Services to create and maintain team sites. Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, a server product, is built on Windows SharePoint Services, and adds features used to build and manage integrated, large-scale portal solutions.
This SDK also includes new documentation for the Web Part Page Services Component (WPSC), which is a client-side component that adds dynamic capabilities to your Web Part Page by providing Web Part discovery, notification, and state management services used by Web Parts; and for Windows SharePoint Services RPC methods.
Download: SharePoint Products and Technologies 2003 Software Development Kit (SDK)
Microsoft Outlook: travelers’ secret weapon (Feb 9)
If you want to become a better traveler, you can skip some of those “how-to” books penned by armchair road warriors.
Instead, fire up your laptop computer and open Microsoft Outlook.
Yes, I’m talking about that ever-present application that handles e-mail, scheduling and some word processing tasks. Odds are pretty good that you’ve got a copy of it installed on your laptop, and that you take your portable with you when you travel. (Regarding the latter point, a recent survey by Harris Interactive found that more than one in four laptop PC owners say their machine is one of their “most prized possessions,” and nearly a third said they’ve regretted leaving it at home on trips and have turned around to retrieve it on at least one occasion.)
Outlook is to travelers what a paper clip is to MacGyver. It does a lot more than you think. (My apologies to those who aren’t familiar with television show which had its heyday in the 1980s and ’90s.)
View full article: Microsoft Outlook: travelers’ secret weapon
Geeks Put the Unsavvy on Alert: Learn or Log Off (Feb 6)
When Scott Granneman, a technology instructor, heard that one of his former students had clicked on a strange e-mail attachment and infected her computer with the MyDoom Internet virus last week, empathy did not figure anywhere in his immediate response.
“You actually got infected by the virus?” he wrote in an e-mail message to the former student, Robin Woltman, a university grant administrator. “You, Robin? For shame!”
As MyDoom, the fastest-spreading virus ever, continues to clog e-mail in-boxes and disrupt business, the computer-savvy are becoming openly hostile toward the not-so-savvy who unwittingly play into the hands of virus writers.
The tension over the MyDoom virus underscores a growing friction between technophiles and what they see as a breed of technophobes who want to enjoy the benefits of digital technology without making the effort to use it responsibly.
The virus spreads when Internet users ignore a basic rule of Internet life: never click on an unknown e-mail attachment. Once someone does, MyDoom begins to send itself to the names in that person’s e-mail address book. If no one opened the attachment, the virus’s destructive power would never be unleashed.
“It takes affirmative action on the part of the clueless user to become infected,” wrote Scott Bowling, president of the World Wide Web Artists Consortium, expressing frustration on the group’s discussion forum. “How to beat this into these people’s heads?”
View full article: Geeks Put the Unsavvy on Alert: Learn or Log Off
MyDoom (A,B) Worm Removal Tool for Windows XP and Windows 2000 (Feb 6)
This tool will help to remove the MyDoom.A and My.Doom.B worms from infected Windows XP and Windows 2000 systems. Once executed, after the EULA is accepted, the tool automatically checks for infection and removes the worm(s) if found. If a machine is infected with MyDoom.B, the tool will also provide the user with the default version of the “hosts” file and set the “read-only” attribute for that file. This action will allow the user to visit previously-blocked Microsoft and antivirus websites.
After execution, the tool pops-up a message describing the outcome of the detection/removal. The tool can be safely deleted after execution. Also, the tool creates a log file named doomcln.log in the %WINDIR%\debug folder.
This tool will not:
Detect/remove any viruses or worms besides MyDoom.A and MyDoom.B.
Detect/remove future variants of MyDoom.
Prevent the machine from being re-infected with MyDoom if, for example, an infected e-mail attachment is re-executed.
Detect/remove malware that exists on a system as a result of the backdoor component created by MyDoom.A and MyDoom.B
Delete any e-mail that contains MyDoom.A or MyDoom.B
Work on any Windows NT 4.0 platform.
The user must be an administrator to run this tool.
Download: MyDoom (A,B) Worm Removal Tool for Windows XP and Windows 2000
Critical Update for Microsoft XML 3.0 (Feb 6)
This update contains Microsoft XML (MSXML) functionality that will allow applications using MSXML to continue to function correctly after security update 832894, Security Update for Internet Explorer, has been applied. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer. Once you have installed this item, it cannot be removed.
Download: Critical Update for Microsoft XML 3.0 Service Pack 2 – KB832414
Download: Critical Update for Microsoft XML 3.0 Service Pack 3 – KB832414
Download: Critical Update for Microsoft XML 3.0 Service Pack 4 – KB832414
