The onslaught of ransomware and devious social engineering efforts means it’s only a matter of time before your organization is hit with a major email virus outbreak.

Administrators should prepare on-premises Exchange — and themselves — to quickly stem the bleeding when that malware lands in a user’s inbox. And while the techniques to protect on-premises Exchange Server aren’t new, they are important steps to reduce the effects of an attack. Even if the antivirus scanner fails to detect the threat, there are ways to isolate affected mailboxes, slow the proliferation and even stop the spread of a virus. Have procedures, processes and scripts in place to fight off an email virus outbreak before trouble starts.

The risk chart also indicates the appropriate response based on the severity and distribution of the threat. For example, a widespread distribution of the destructive Locky ransomware warrants a far greater response than when the Tinba malware hits a single mailbox. Use this chart as a baseline to assemble a threat-response plan.

Follow this link to get the processes and scripts you can use to help slow down the attack.

Small problems can turn into large ones in Exchange environments that aren’t regularly monitored, causing the system to deteriorate quickly to the point of outage or even total failure.

There are a few areas to watch to prevent outages in single-sever Exchange environments and large enterprises with multiple servers. Here are three of the most common causes of extended Exchange outages.

Failed/Incomplete Disaster Recovery Plan

A failed recovery is the most common cause of extended Exchange outages. It may sound like circular logic, but if the Exchange environment is down for multiple days, the root cause of the failure is no longer relevant. Don’t let indecision and untested processes fuel a crisis. Every Exchange shop needs to have a detailed plan to recover each of the following: single mailbox, single database, single server and the entire environment.

While there are a number of third-party products that handle disaster recovery, tools and processes included with Microsoft Exchange and Windows Server are good options because Microsoft offers support and documentation for different disaster scenarios. Microsoft provides guidance on how to restore the following — a single mailbox from a database backup, an Exchange Server, a DAG Member Server and dial tone portability, which can solve failures of a mailbox database, server or entire site.

Use these procedures regularly to understand the process and test backups. The processes to restore a database and a single mailbox are not invasive; administrators can perform these procedures on live servers. It’s best to perform these on weekends and after hours to minimize the potential effect on end users.

For the rest of the article, please follow this link to my complete article at Tech Target.

Recognition is always appreciated and last month Microsoft honored me by including me in the MVP Reconnect Program. Its a privilege to be included in the group once more and to be reconnected with so many brilliant and talented people again.