Email is one of the most important communications tools for businesses. When it stops working, people start to get nervous.

While there are many things that a user can do to mess up their email, many of these problems can be resolved with a restart of the software or the computer.

However when the old standby of restarting doesn’t work, it is time for the email administrator to start looking into the issue a bit more deeply.

Here are some of the more common errors found in Outlook 2007 along with some of the ways you can make things right again: Continue reading 5 Common Outlook Errors and How to Fix Them

In an age where millions of emails are sent every day it is hard to find someone who hasn’t made a mistake when sending a message.

If you are using Microsoft Outlook and Exchange, you can quickly recall a message and delete unread copies, if you are lucky that is and no one has opened the email. If someone has already opened your errant message, then it’s too late.

Companies have become a bit more cognizant that some employees are just a bit too quick to pull the Send trigger on their mail. To compensate, many have put into place a time delay that gives someone the opportunity to think twice about a message that was sent out and stop it before it is delivered. Continue reading Common Mistakes When Sending Emails

When starting out, many small businesses set up their email using one of the free accounts available to them. Services like Gmail by Google, Hotmail from Microsoft or Yahoo!’s mail service, provide a working email address with almost no maintenance for a business just getting its feet wet.

However this may not be the best way to make a first impression with your potential customers.

Listed below are seven reasons why you need to ditch the yourcompany@freeemail.com and go with an address that better reflects the image you want your company to have. Continue reading 7 Reasons to Ditch That Free Email Address

You may have read the stories about how Atos Origin, a French IT services company, is looking to make their offices an email-free workplace by the year 2013 to eliminate what they call email pollution.

By turning to collaborative social medial tools, such as the Atos Wiki, employees have already seen a 20% reduction in “email pollution” six months after this initiative went into practice.

Volkswagen has also attempted to cut back on after hour’s emails being sent to and from employees Blackberrys in a similar effort. However, while cutting back on emails like Atos is trying to do may seem trend setting, it hardly seems to be a realistic goal.

Not only because of how many workplaces have become reliant on emails to get work done, but rather how these people use email to get work done.

As we all know, emails are not only used to deliver electronic messages. People in office buildings all over the world have found ways to “hack” their email accounts to do much more than send and receive messages. Continue reading 5 Creative Uses For Email

Email compliance is always a hot issue. Yet even while there are laws and regulations governing how certain industries send, receive, store and secure email messages, 73.7% of people who responded to a survey admitted that they had violated email compliance policies at their workplace.

It is important to note as well that this number represents those who knowingly violate company email policies. The same survey showed that 42.7% of those asked claim that their company either doesn’t have email compliance policies, or they were unsure if such a policy was in place.

So what are some of the most common violations of these policies? Take a look:

Continue reading 5 Most Common Violations of Email Compliance

Recently we wrote about how workers in the United Kingdom felt compelled to check their email at all times, even during holidays like Christmas. Those same kinds of pressures are felt across the Channel, too, in Germany, but some employers over there are relieving those pressures by turning off the email spigot.

The latest employer to do that is auto maker Volkswagen. The Kaiser of Fahrvergnügen cut a deal with its unions recently to shut-off outbound mail from its Blackberry servers to rank-and-file workers from one half hour after close of business to one half hour before office hours begin each day. The agreement doesn’t apply to managers and executives at the company. Continue reading Volkswagen Shuts Off Email Servers After Business Hours

This morning I noticed the flashing red light on my Blackberry alerting me to a new message. Since this device is connected to my work email account, I decided to give it a look to see what was so important that it couldn’t wait until Monday.

I was lucky that I did check it. The new message was actually from my personal email account and the contents of the message contained only one link and other people were also sent the same message.

I realized immediately that my personal email account was sending spam. I was upset with this because working with email and security, I write and train others on best practices. Not only this, but I follow them as well. I make sure that: Continue reading Yes, My Email Account Was Compromised

At one time or another, most email administrators are tasked with the responsibility of writing up policies that govern the use of email in an organization. These policies are necessary to:

• Protect against email based threats and vulnerabilities
• Reduce the organization’s liability if email is used inappropriately by employees
• Prevent misconduct when it comes to email use
• Educate employees on email etiquette
• Inform employees of email monitoring policies. Continue reading 5 Ways To Increase Email Policy Compliance

Most email administrators don’t have celebrities like Scarlett Johansson on their networks, but that doesn’t mean they don’t host some pretty juicy targets for cyber robbers.

Hollywood hotties can grab headlines for a hacker, but anyone in a corporation’s chain of command whose identity can be compromised and exploited to filch trade secrets, bank account numbers, and the like, is just as worthy a target for crackers, if not more so. After all, exposing some embarrassing pix about a starlet may earn a hacker some fame, but cajoling bank account credentials from a “suit” can earn him a fortune. Continue reading Lessons Email Administrators Can Learn from ‘Hollywood Hacker’ Bust

Whenever a new cool technology is introduced into a consumer smartphone, for every “wow” it sparks from an early adopter, an “ouch” is elicited from a system administrator. That appears to be the case with Siri, the “personal assistant” in the latest model of Apple’s iPhone, the 4S.

The 4S was introduced on October 5 and has proven to be extremely popular, with four million units sold during the first weekend it was available to consumers. Some of those consumers, however, are going to find that their shiny new toys are going to be mobilis non gratus when they try to connect them to their corporate networks. That’s because some organizations consider the smartphones a security risk.

At the root of the problem is Siri. It allows you to use your voice to issue commands and posit queries to the phone. For instance, you can say, “Where can I eat pizza around here?” And Siri will respond with a map with nearby pizza joints tagged on it. Or, without any training, you can ask it to call someone from your address book while you’re driving your car so you don’t have to touch the phone. Continue reading iPhone’s Siri Could Pose Threat to Email Security