We are always in search of new ways to make Syneto products faster, easier to use and more reliable so our customers enjoy a powerful product that will offer great quality for their investment. Lately, our engineers have been working hard on fixing a few bugs and quirks in the UTM platform. The result: UTM version 1.4.2. Below are just a few of the fixes included in this version. We highly encourage you to update to this latest version to benefit from these improvements.

Fixes:
•    DNS cache refreshes correctly when nameservers change
•    IP aliases with a /32 netmask are now accepted
•    Correctly align elements in tables (NAT, filters)
•    Prevent a browser caching issue requiring admin. to clear the cache after an upgrade
•    Optimize memory usage when antivirus scanning is not enabled
•    Downloading and installing updates while under heavy load no longer blocks UTM
•    Dashboard graphics now show properly in Internet Explorer
•    Attempting to set an empty password for ssh access is no longer permitted
•    Web category statistics no longer stop updating in certain conditions
•    Update antivirus more reliably
•    Editing an alias IP address will now properly rename the network and interface definition
•    Enabling HTTP proxy on a bridge interface now works properly
•    Default system update URL is now set correctly

For more information and details on the Unified Threat Management platform, visit our website or demo the product.

Our partner in the fight against internet threats, Commtouch, has just released their latest in-depth report that covers Web threats, phishing, malware, and spam. Q2 2011 has witnessed a vast downgrade in spam levels due to a shift from botnet flavored spam activity to low-level compromised accounts. Both law enforcement and IP-based blocking techniques have proven highly effective this quarter, with spammers actively trying to avoid these traps. They are employing a combination of malware and phishing to compromise legitimate accounts and then use these accounts to send low-volume spam outbreaks.

Facebook is once again a key battleground as more people are socially integrated on-line, making them a far easier target. Amongst the preferred techniques is malware that tricks users by promising applications that reveal who was viewing their profiles as well as Osama Bin Laden death videos.

Q2 2011 also witnessed:

• Phony IRS “rejected payment” emails.
• Fake iPhone 5 notifications.
• SEO poisoning.
• Malicious scripts within Adobe PDF files

The highlights:

• Spam levels averaged 113 billion spam/phishing messages per day during Q2, the lowest in three years.
• Approximately 377,000 zombies were activated daily during Q2, a significant increase compared to the 258,000 zombies in Q1.
• The most popular spam topic in Q2 was pharmacy ads, although these now represent only 24% of all spam, down from 28% in Q1.
• India keeps its title as the country with the most zombies – 17% of all zombies worldwide.
• Websites featuring pornography and sexually explicit material were the most likely to contain malware.

To get the full picture on the war against internet threats download the report and take a look at Syneto’s Security Center.
Syneto offers the perfect weapon to fight the ever expanding range of internet threats, Total Email Protection, so be sure to take a look.

The new stable version 1.4.0 of Syneto UTM and TEP are now available.

The UTM comes with several new features like:

• Enhanced web content filtering
• Windows Active Directory Integration
• Time based content filtering
• Advanced web filtering based on Active Directory groups, networks, hosts and time intervals

Several issues were fixed on both UTM & TEP products regarding High Availability, system update and more.

The UTM’s Web Content Filtering interface was redesigned for easier use and configuration.

The new Profiles page offers a simple overview of all the defined profiles allowing individual editing.

For each profile you can now define web access policies based on time intervals, URL categories and custom categories.

On the filter settings page, you have a new option to set a list of file extensions to be skipped.

And finally the Active Directory Integration feature provides an easier association between users, groups, and web access policies.

With all these new features now available, we invite you to upgrade to this latest 1.4.0 version and read on at our knowledge base and release notes for more details.

We’re proud to announce the Beta 1.4.0 release of the Syneto UTM. Based upon customer requests, we decided to implement the integration between our Total Web Protection and Windows Server 2003/2008 Active Directory. As a bonus, we also added the possibility to define custom time-based rules.

Syneto Engineers have devised a simple way to integrate Active Directory with the web filtering service in 5 easy steps. To see it in action, login to your Private Area account and download the beta firmware:

• Update your UTM to v. 1.4.0 beta
• Download the Syneto AD Agent (Web > Content Filter Settings) and install to your Active Directory server
• Configure the connection between UTM and the Windows server
• Configure the desired groups and time rules
• Sit back and relax while user traffic is filtered according to AD group access policy

Below are a few screenshots of the new feature, click to enlarge:

We would love to hear your opinion.

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss the UTM’s features post it on the Syneto forum.
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation use the feedback for (left side tab) on our website.
• Use our public demo servers anytime.

Enjoy.

Syneto engineers are always trying to improve our products, making them even more user-friendly and significantly upgrading their arsenal in the fight against internet threats. The new version of Unified Threat Management fields an impressive array of tools that increase productivity and slashes those pesky IT costs.

New features:

• Centralized whitelist and blacklist for all email engines
• Per-domain email whitelist and blacklist
• Whitelist sender from Quarantine Digest Message
• Retry to Quarantine Digest Message sending added
• Faster Commtouch engine
• Faster boot time

With spam, malware and zombie levels on the rise, Syneto engineers are always coming up with new ways to help you increase your productivity and earn more. So be on the lookout for more smart ways to protect your company’s network.

More resources:

• Case studies
• Presentation flyer: english; italian
• Security center

The latest internet threat report from Syneto’s security partner Commtouch, rounds up a tough year 2010 for the average email inbox. Although spam rates had slight decline this winter, there are still hundreds of billions of spam messages, phishing attempts and malware attacks daily. With Syneto and others tightening the noose around internet threats, vintage spam methods have been resurrected and mixed with some new tactics, whilst the holiday season has witnessed new and creative ways of distributing malware.

The highlights:

• 142 billion – average spam email/day
• 288 thousand – Zombies found daily
• India – the most Zombie infested country
• Sexually explicit websites – most likely to contain malware
• 42% of all spam was pharmacy ads
• Phony Hallmark cards used as malware/spam containers

Download the report for the complete picture of internet threats in Q4 2010.

Total Email Protection is Syneto’s answer to any and all internet threats. Take a look and learn how to make your network safe and productive.

We are very happy to announce the immediate availability of our newest Syneto UTM release: version 1.3.0. We put a great effort into developing it, so we hope you will be pleased with the results.

The main focus of the 1.3.0 release is the email functionality. We received signals from our customers that configuring the email proxy was a little… difficult, so we spent a lot of time to make it easier and usable. We fully redesigned the email configuration pages, united some features, removed unused settings and merged others. The result is a more comprehensible interface that we think you’ll enjoy working with.

Since performance is an ever-growing issue, we took the necessary steps to improve the quality of our engines and the quantity of mail they could process. By partnering with Commtouch, we obtained both. Their global IP reputation engine filters out most of the email by only analyzing the source IP (increased performance), while their antispam/antivirus engines weed out the remaining threats (increased quality).

To top everything off, we implemented new email-related features that you asked for. The email digest sends a daily email message to every person that has quarantined malware, enabling for its easy deletion/retrieval. Enhanced email reporting was added as a way to get a clear picture of the UTM’s function (top senders, top receivers, top blocked IPs etc), and the executive summary functionality allows managers to receive daily reports via email, so that they too can keep track of what is going on inside the network.

See full release notes for 1.3.0 on the knowledge base.

Seeing as how this is the first post of the year, please allow me to wish all of you a great 2010, may it be better than the year we just ended.

I’ve been really quiet during the last few months, as we’ve been very busy developing, but this time I have some great news to share with you.

October last year we signed a strategic agreement with Commtouch – one of the leading providers of global email and web threat intelligence, with thousands of clients in over 190 countries. What does that mean for the Syneto family of products? It means that the level of detection of our email protection engines gained a great performance boost, effectively transforming us in a top competitor in the email security market.

Why are we announcing this only now? We wanted to wait until we were really close to releasing a product with the new technology incorporated, and that product is the next generation of our Syneto UTM – version 1.3.0, in which we integrated the Commtouch Antispam, Antivirus and IP reputation engines, along with a lot of other great enhancements to our product. I will blog more on the technical details in the following days, but I am sure you will be amazed by the progress we made.

The good news is the new version is pretty close to release, as we are entering the RELEASE CANDIDATE phase at the beginning of next week (January 18th). That means we will be releasing the final version in the first days of February. Meanwhile, if you would like to take part in the evaluation of the RELEASE CANDIDATE, please send me an email at flavius(at)syneto(dot)net and I will gladly help you obtain a copy.

We are preparing a surprise for you. Next week we’ll be releasing the fruits of an effort to better service the Syneto UTM users. The documentation as you now know it will be history… Think better search, easier findability and ubiquity.

Check back by the website and blog early next week to find out what we have in store for you. In the meantime, have a nice weekend!

Edit: we revealed the surprise in this post.

We are often asked when we think a certain feature or another will be implemented in our Unified Threat Management solution. To address this issue, Syneto decided you all should know what we are working on, so we created a page on the official website called Syneto UTM roadmap. There you can see what we are currently working on and what we are intending to implement in the future releases. Feel free to make suggestions, comments or feature requests by sending mail to contact [at] syneto [dot] net, or by commenting on this page.