Hackers Exploit Flaws in Microsoft Exchange Server
Microsoft Exchange Server is a highly efficient email server and calendaring server developed by Microsoft Corporation. It runs solely on Windows Server operating systems, hence making it very compatible. It can be used to host a variety of mailboxes such as e-mail, folders, mailing lists, and attachments. In recent times, Microsoft Exchange Server has seen significant improvement in its performance and scalability. The increase in popularity is due largely to the number of businesses that have been using it for their corporate communication needs. Businesses use this server not only for their normal business communications but also for their time-management tasks.
To utilize the features of Microsoft Exchange Server,
it requires the use of Microsoft Office and Microsoft Outlook applications. Microsoft Exchange Server provides the necessary platform for performing business task with the help of a huge database that stores all the mails and contacts in a convenient manner. The best part about the Microsoft Exchange Server is that you don’t need to buy any expensive dedicated server to host your company’s data on. All you need is a proper internet connection to access the Exchange database. This means that you can also work from any place that has a high speed internet connection.
Microsoft Exchange Server can be integrated with third party software such as Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Word to increase the efficiency of the system. These popular programs enable users to manage their emails and other documents through the Microsoft Exchange Server. With such integration, the tasks related to scheduling, creating and moving documents from one place to another are made simpler. With the help of Microsoft Office tools like e-mail, outlook, and Word, you can create, edit, and close emails easily. You can even insert attachments of different formats and sizes with Microsoft Outlook. And if you don’t have any Microsoft Outlook tools installed, you can use a web browser to do these tasks.
Microsoft Exchange Server works well with other third party applications like Google Docs, Quickoffice, and Open Office. All these tools require server deployment that makes it difficult for users to access the data they want from any place they like. But with hosted exchange programs such as Microsoft Exchange Server, all these processes are made simple. Users just need to log in to a hosted secure server site and access their files from any place that has a modern internet connection.
Microsoft Exchange Server and its first version allowed users to send and receive electronic mail. However, the limitations of this service made it inconvenient to handle large amounts of mail and bulky emails. To overcome these limitations, Microsoft introduced the email client, which works much like the desktop email client. The first version of the Microsoft Exchange Server only allows storing documents and emails in a local or offline storage device and transferring them from the server to the email client.
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 was designed with two objectives in mind – increase efficiency and make business communications easier. It features various improvements over the previous versions like multiple database management, improved functionality, improved data protection, and spam filtering, improved connectivity, and more. Though, even with these new additions, a company’s IT costs will still largely depend on the amount of users and the amount of storage provided by the company. A company with fewer than 250 users will need to look for a hosted Microsoft Exchange Server that offers affordable storage as well as basic functionality.
Microsoft Exchange Server can be divided into two categories:
self-service and managed. Self-service is when users manage their own server while managing is when a third party handles all the maintenance, updates, etc. Microsoft Exchange Server can also be classified according to storage, application platform, and licensing models. There is also Microsoft Exchange Server 2019, the newest version that is packed with great features that have been improved over the previous versions. This software comes with the Microsoft cloud technology that enables users to easily access their data from any location.
Microsoft Exchange Server can be a very cost-effective option, especially when one decides to go with on-premises options. The most notable advantage about using this server software is that it provides the best and most secure data security services.
- The users can also manage all the communication processes right from their laptops or mobile devices using the cloud technology.
- With on-premises servers, it becomes difficult to access information on the server as there are several network barriers.
- But with cloud technology, an employee can access information from anywhere and at any time.