BorderWare MXtreme customers unaffected by most recent Microsoft security vulnerabilities

BorderWare customers in the Middle East, which range from large to small businesses, have not witnessed any downtime or security issues that can be attributed to Microsoft's security bulletins MS03-046 and MS03-047, which stated that the 'Vulnerability in Exchange Server Could Allow Arbitrary Code Execution.' An attacker can use the vulnerability to essentially hijack an organization's email servers and run malicious programs in the security context of the SMTP service. An attacker exploiting the vulnerability in Exchange Server 5.5 Outlook Web Access can gain access to any user-accessible data belonging to the site. In addition to these two exploits, Microsoft has issued several bulletins specific to weaknesses in Microsoft Exchange's security, none of which affect MXtreme customers.

Impact BBDO, the regional marketing and advertising giant, which has reached the final stages of testing the MXtreme product, stated very positive results against other competing products. 'The MXtreme firewall has proved to be a very solid product and fits very well within our overall technology infrastructure and strategy,' commented Roland Khoury, Impact BBDO's Regional IT Manager. 'Our vigorous testing of the product have shown positive results on controlling unsolicited mail.'

With as many as 78 million business users in the U.S. alone and the number on the increase in the Middle East requiring remote access to corporate email, security ranks high on the minds of IT professionals. A survey conducted by Osterman Research, Inc. finds that 35.6% of IT decision-makers and end-users of information technology consider secure remote access for email as a 'problem' or a 'very serious problem' to contend with.

Such is the case for Eric Swanlund, Director of Engineering and IT Services, at managed IT and professional services company ThinOffice Inc., who has safely deployed Outlook Web Access using MXtreme for many customers. According to Swanlund, 'Not having to worry about updating each and every operating system and Exchange server has given us peace-of-mind, reducing our security concerns for remote email access, while increasing the quality of service to our customers. With MXtreme, email is always up and running.'

MXtreme provides comprehensive protection to email systems from any number of threats including spam, viruses or other attacks, and enables companies to safely deploy Outlook Web Access for remote mail by providing a secure proxy to Microsoft Exchange. MXtreme deploys in front of a company's email infrastructure and handles all email traffic including remote sessions. It ensures that Exchange servers cannot be directly accessed, and that remote users are secured by an encrypted session. MXtreme can also be used to enforce security policies for remote users such as strong authentication with tokens like RSA SecurID.