Not many people were aware of this feature, says the Gmail team, so they decided to create an actual icon for a verified account so people would recognize an email address that’s legitimate. If you turn on “Authentication icon for verified senders” from the Labs tab under Settings, you’ll start to see a key icon next to verified emails that are “super-trustworthy.”

What does “super-trustworthy” mean? Brad Taylor, Gmail’s Spam Czar, says the term includes several situations: 1. when the the sender, usually a financial institution, is a target of phishers, 2. all of the sender’s email is authenticated with DKIM, and 3. Gmail rejects any fake messages that claim to come from this sender, but actually don’t.

Gmail says that because of the arduous process for senders to make their email super-trustworthy, the feature is currently limited to just eBay and PayPal. Gmail hopes to add more senders in the future, making the key icon a more widely used and recognizable symbol for verified accounts.

• Product Requirements

• How to configure iPhone secure access via:
  • Access Gateway Strandard Edtion
  • Access Gateway Enterprise Edtion
  • Citrix Secure Gateway

• How to provide access information to end users

• Basic troubleshooting steps

• Known Issues

Download the Citrix Receiver for iPhone Admin Guide

MSE is basically the next generation of Microsoft’s Windows Live Onecare anti-virus and anti-spyware service, but without all of the extras, such as a firewall, data backup solution or PC performance tuning (Microsoft announced in Nov. 2008 that it would stop selling Onecare through its retail channels at the end of June 2009).

The toughest part was getting the program installed. MSE can run on Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions), but it failed to install on an XP Pro system I tried to use as my initial test machine — leaving me with nothing more than a failure message and cryptic error code that didn’t turn up anything in an online search.

Fortunately, it installed without issue on my Windows 7 Beta system. Interested users should note that installing MSE requires that the would-be user’s system passes Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage anti-piracy tool, which checks to make sure it is being installed on a licensed version of Windows. Would-be users also will need to register for or already have a free Windows Live (or Hotmail) account in order to download the program.

After installation, MSE spends a couple of minutes downloading additional files, and then prompts the user to perform a “Quick Scan.” True to its name, that scan took less than 10 minutes on my test system. A full scan, however, took about 45 minutes on a relatively new install of Windows 7.

Anti-virus products are notorious for sucking up system resources, but you’d be forgiven for forgetting this program is even running. It barely used more than 4 MB of system memory for the entire time I tested it, including during scans.

By default, MSE scans archived files (.zip, e.g.), and creates a system restore point before deleting any files that set off alarms. The one scanning option not checked by default is to scan removable drives — such as USB drives — for viruses. But users can enable this option.

The program is not just an on-demand scanner: It includes real-time protection, which Microsoft says “alerts you when viruses, spyware and other potentially unwanted software attempts to install itself or run on your computer.”

In addition, MSE monitors file and program activity on your computer, and automatically scans all downloaded files and attachments. If it finds something, it will ask you what to do with the suspect file, and if the user takes no action after 10 minutes, Microsoft will decide what to do with the file(s) according to its default actions. Out of the box, it schedules a scan every Sunday at 2:00 a.m., but only if the PC is idle at that time.

A great deal has been written so far about the potential for MSE to unseat established giants in the anti-virus industry. It’s too soon to say whether that will happen, or how Microsoft’s new offering will measure up in tests against real-life malicious software, tests that are beyond the scope of this review.

Personally, I doubt whether MSE will have much of an impact on the anti-virus market as a whole. If anti-virus industry players fall by the wayside in the coming years, it will be because they either get gobbled up by their (non-Microsoft) competitors, or they fail to adapt to the latest threats.

Each time the issue of Microsoft throwing its weight around in the security space arises, it invariably raises the same issues of trust, privacy and efficacy. Allow me to address a few of the common themes, in the context of MSE:

Microsoft made the operating system, so it’s probably best equipped to produce software capable of defending its weaknesses: The truth is, Microsoft is continually defending the weaknesses in Windows. Every month, it ships new patches to fix security and stability problems in its software that it didn’t know about until bad guys or researchers unearthed them and proved they were exploitable. What’s more, Microsoft is in no more advantageous a position vis-a-vis other anti-virus makers to tell which tricks the bad guys will pull out of their hats next.

Microsoft is responsible for the same buggy software that lets the bad guys break in, so why would you trust them to also do a good job defending your PC against malware?: This is a fair question, but the folks asking this very question probably will never install this software anyway.

And, while I don’t believe Microsoft has the time or the inclination to go rooting through users’ systems for personal information, the disclaimer for the default “Basic membership” in Microsoft SpyNet that ships with MSE also isn’t likely to reassure those who doubt the company’s intentions. It reads:

“Send basic information to Microsoft about software that Microsoft Security Essentials detects, including where the software came from, the actions that you apply or that Microsoft Security Essentials applies automatically, and whether the actions were successful. In some instances, personal information might unintentionally be sent to Microsoft. However, Microsoft will not use this information to identify you or to contact you.”

Microsoft is only offering this product so that it can gain a foothold in the security software market, after which time it will start charging people to protect their computers whilst strong-arming its competition: Microsoft has said it plans to continue offering MSE for free. And for all of the reasons stated above, I don’t believe Microsoft’s offering of a free anti-virus product is going to steal too many paying customers away from other products. After all, there are plenty of other free anti-virus products available, including AVAST! Home Edition, Avira’s AntiVir, AVG Free, ClamWin, PCTools, and Panda’s new Cloud Antivirus offering, to name but a few.

I suspect Microsoft is offering this software for reasons part public relations and part self-preservation: Redmond knows that anything it can do to ensure that there are fewer malware-infested PCs out there is a good thing. And let’s face it, for whatever reason — even with the impressive number of free anti-virus offerings out there already — a dangerous number of Windows users continue to use the operating system without any kind of anti-virus software installed. At least with its brand recognition, Microsoft has a good chance of changing that reality to some degree.

One final note, if you’re interested in trying out this software, you probably want to move pretty quickly. According to ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft intends to make this beta available only to the first 75,000 downloaders in the United States, Brazil or Israel.

The open-source browser is now available for download for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Originally envisioned as a quick follow-up to 2008’s release of Firefox 3.0, Mozilla ended up packing in quite a few extra features into its flagship browser and spent months making sure that Firefox 3.5 was the fastest, most powerful Firefox yet.

Firefox 3.5 brings with it entirely new and much faster rendering engines for both static web pages and the JavaScript code that powers today’s complex web-based applications. There are new privacy features, new capabilities for playing video and audio files and improved search tools. There are also a handful of other new features that should prove useful for both Firefox devotees and newcomers alike.

We’ve been using the latest betas and release candidates for the last few months. No matter what kind of web surfer you are, we recommend you download Firefox 3.5 as soon as you can

Active Directory Recycle Bin
Have you ever accidentally deleted an object (like a user or entire OU) and had to restore it? Now you can retrieve those items from a Recycle Bin, back to its state just before deletion, rather than restoring an object from the last system state backup.

Active Directory Best Practices Analyzer
This feature goes through your Active Directory Directory Services, determines if you are meeting best practice standards, and reports back the good, the bad, and the ugly. It also provides instruction on what you need to do to meet best practices for Active Directory. You can locate this feature by looking under the Roles in Server Manager and looking at the Role Status summary for a link to start a scan.

Active Directory Administrative Center
The admin center is a new GUI interface that allows you to access the same features as in the Active Directory Users and Computers tool, plus adds a few new features such as a list view and breadcrumb bar navigation. It’s really a task-oriented interface based on the new PowerShell cmdlets that will provide another method of administration.

A new Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell
This new module (named ActiveDirectory) replaces the large variety of command-line tools that we used to work with Active Directory in times past. Now you have a centralized method of administering AD from the command line. There are about 85 Active Directory-oriented PowerShell cmdlets, making your ability to script Active Directory tasks through PowerShell much easier.

Posted on May 19, 2009 1:28 pm by John C. Welch, Macworld.com

For almost any system administrator, the idea of “off-time” is fictional. Even when I’m on vacation, there’s an unwritten expectation that if need be, I’m going to be summoned to solve a problem. (Even on my honeymoon, for example, I found myself spending a half-hour or so dealing with a work issue.)

WiFiFoFum can help tell you a lot about the status of your Wi-Fi network beyond the basics.

As a result, having just a plain cell phone isn’t an option for a sysadmin like me—smartphones become mandatory. Since its release, I’ve been on an iPhone, and since the introduction of the App Store, my iPhone has gone from merely handy to a really useful tool. So, in no particular order, here are the things I use to make my sysadmin life easier:

EDGE: When you host Web sites and other Internet-based services, the ability to check them from an outside network is critical. So, when we need to test “from the outside”, I just turn off Wi-Fi, sit at my desk and do external testing.The same rule applies for 3G iPhones, obviously. (I haven’t upgraded yet because I’m cheap.)

Safari: Fortunately, I never need Flash for my work, but I cannot function without a Web browser. With the iPhone, I never have to.

Mail: Like having a decent Web browser, I can’t live without e-mail. In addition to just being able to get email, the Exchange Active Sync (EAS) support in the iPhone lets me test different servers’ implementations of this with ease. This was important to us when we changed e-mail servers recently. Being able to fully test iPhone support was a major benefit, and helped us not have to rely on vendor promises.

LDAPeople: I’ve written about this application before, but LDAPeople from Boneware bears mentioning here as well. Since our network is based around Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), being able to get information from our LDAP setup is invaluable and very convenient when we see indications that our LDAP servers may be getting wonky. Since LDAPeople is just an LDAP client, nothing more, it’s a more direct way to test our LDAP servers without having to fire up Mac OS X’s Address Book, or Entourage, or some other application that uses LDAP.

WinAdmin: The world isn’t single-platform, and neither is my network. I have a number of Windows Servers that I have to take care of, and because Windows command-line access is sub-optimal, the best way to remotely administer a Windows box is via Windows Terminal Services. I use WinAdmin from Carter Harrison to manage such systems. WinAdmin is a simple client for Windows Terminal Services, and makes it easy to remotely log in to and administer my Windows Servers. We also have AquaConnect Terminal Server running—Mac terminal server software. With WinAdmin installed, I can connect remotely main network monitoring server—an Intel-based Xserve running Mac OS X Server 10.5.6.

TouchTerm Pro SSH: Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) are pretty and nice, but for low bandwidth secure remote access, nothing beats a good Secure Shell (SSH) client. That’s what TouchTermPro SSH from Aji fits the bill. For Unix administrators especially, SSH is the tool of choice for many tasks, and out of all the SSH clients I’ve played with on the iPhone, TouchTerm Pro SSH impressed me the most and is the most useful to me.

What’s Goin Down: While some people may like to see their computer running, to me, the best server is one in a room that I never go into and never have to physically see. However, I still need to know if the server is running okay, and for that, I’ve found Random Ideas’ application, What’s Goin Down, to be darned useful. It lets me check different services on servers, even multiple services on the same server. So if I have a Web server that’s hosting multiple sites, I can check each site individually. I can separately check IMAP, SMTP or POP e-mail services. What’s Goin Down allows me to verify server operational status quickly and efficiently from almost anywhere.

WiFiFoFum: Most people never have to pay too much attention to Wi-Fi other than to know it’s working. But there’s a bit more to it for IT admins. Understanding signal to noise ratio, the presence of unknown base stations, and the operational status of base stations that are part of our network are examples of factors IT needs to know. With WiFiFoFum (reviewed here), I can get a lot of information about my wireless network in seconds, which is a huge help in figuring out which base station has suddenly dropped off the map. The radar view is not only neat, but kind of handy. From Aspecto Software. [Editor's note: In another life John worked on B-1B bombers, so of course he finds the radar view neat.]

These seven apps (and one service) are great examples of how useful the iPhone can be to the IT manager. I use all of them regularly to make my professional life run a lot smoother. What are your choices? Chime in with your own comments.

Smart Surfing is powered by the Trend Micro™ Smart Protection Network using advanced “in the cloud” Web Reputation technology to protect you from Web pages with malicious intent. If you attempt to access a bad or malicious URL, Smart Surfing is designed to block access to the URL and a notification will appear in the browser.

Its features including:

• Blocks access to Web pages with malicious content.
• Helps protect against phishing and pharming attacks.
• Provides color-coded search results.
• Easy-to-modify protection strength level and notifications.
• Supports browsing multiple Web pages at the same time.

Smart Surfing app App is free and you can download it from iTunes App Store.

Xtenscape was developed by Scott Hather which allows you to take control of this X10 technology using a free custom built app. X10 is an international and open industry standard for communication among electronic devices used for home automation, also known as domotics. This process uses power line wiring for signaling and control, where the signals involve brief radio frequency bursts representing digital information. A wireless radio based protocol transport is also defined.

As for the software, there is a a Windows and Mac version available. The idea of the software, which is free to download for iPhones (note the X-10 hardware [modules] are not), manages control signals by creating a ‘piggy-backed’ system whereby the electrical current running through your house is used to tell a specific receiver to switch on or off. So simple your Granny could do it and all available through your iPhone.

System requirements:

• Intel-based Apple Mac or Windows PC (98 and above)
• Java 1.5 (included on a mac, download for PC)
• Windows only: Microsoft Dot Net 2.0 framework
• CM11A or CM12 X-10 Control module (any type, UK, USA, Euro etc)
• At least one Appliance module or Lamp module
• Spare COM port or USB port (COM to USB convertor)