Not Snail Mail, e-Mail
Ah, certainly the old days of handwriting a letter, placing in an envelope, donning it with a stamp and sending it off to the magic box to await a person to deliver it to its destination is certainly something that is used very rarely anymore. Email has become a main form of communication in the world, but most don't even know how it works. Luckily, it applies almost the same principles as sending off that handwritten letter.
When you visit your email [ Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook ] what you are seeing is actually the client-side of the application. These programs run on your own computer, allowing you to compose & store messages locally. Your client-side application, otherwise referred to as Mail User Agent ( MUA ), communicates with the remote email server, creating a typical client-server relationship. This infographic shows how email works
There are 2 types of email servers → Outgoing & Incoming
Outgoing - Referred to as Mail Transfer Agent or MTA, it uses the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol or SMTP. This server receives email messages from the client app or another server, it then forwards that message to the server of the recipient.
Incoming - Referred to as the Mail Delivery Agent or MDA, it uses the Post Office Protocol version 3 or POP3 / Internet Message Access Protocol or IMAP. This server receives email from local outgoing mail server & stores it in a local directory for the user to access when their mail client connects to the server.
The suggested milestone for last week was the Network & Web Architecture Design. I began putting a redesign together, including all of the necessary parts for the merging company. As they are interested in keeping it as secure as possible, I included a HoneyPOT just off the first firewall. As I have learned, it isn't 'if' but 'when' you will be hacked, and mitigating these as often as we can will put the network in a better starting place than it was previously. Giving hackers an easy target and giving the ITSecurity a bit more time to see how the system is compromised.
As the XYZ company also wants to be able to configure their internal IP's as well, I have included a DMZ with the DHCP server with a Hub to help them configure their internal network. While also increasing their security on the inside for the employees, this also includes a local firewall on each server that only permits access to the service installed on that server with SSH for remote access.
This week's suggested milestone is the Mail Server Installation \ Configuration. As they want their onsite employees to be able to use any client to access their email, and for their offsite employees to be regulated down to only using a web-based email client.
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