CIO.com broke a story last week about issues relating to Exchange connectivity with the iPhone 3.1 OS update. Essentially, older iPhone models will lose their ability to connect with Exchange 2007 when they install the iPhone OS 3.1 update, the current iPhone models will work fine. According to the Apple KB on this issue , the iPhone 3GS supports device encryption, while the earlier iPhone models do not, and their recommendation is to have the Exchange administrator change the mailbox security policy

Over on the official SBS blog is a recent post about why small business owners choose to run Microsoft's Small Business Server . The surprisingly brief post (I was expecting something a little more in-depth, even if it is essentially a marketing piece) does have some good points about how SBS does provide value to small businesses for a reasonable cost. If nothing else, it should be somewhat thought-provoking for those IT Professionals who sell and support SBS for their SMB customers. At the

Think the "cloud" is the end-all and be-all of computing? It's got a long way to go, baby, and I've had a front-row seat for just how bad things can get. A certain vendor (who will remain nameless so don't bother asking) that we work with through my primary business has had an on-line order processing system that went live a couple of years ago and seriously streamlined not only the ordering process but really enhanced our entire relationship with them. Absolutely godsend, actually

The May 21 episodes of eOnCall feature spam prevention as a topic again, but this time Eriq is joined by Scott Barlow of Reflexion Networks, a hosted spam prevention vendor, to talk about the continuing battle to fight spam and what the industry is doing to provide the best solutions possible. In Thursday's pair of episodes, Eriq and Scott talk about the ways spam filters work to weed out unwanted messages, the benefits and drawbacks of using a spam solution, and the benefits and drawbacks of

Amy and I will be joining Karl Palachuk on today's SMB Conference Call to talk about Third Tier. The call starts at 9am Pacific time sharp. Register for the call at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/632770144 . We hope you'll join us today!

We use and recommend the use of LogMeIn for some of our clients who need the ability to remotely access their workstations while away from the office. True, in some situations that type of remote access tool presents potential security concerns, but in those cases where it makes sense, LogMeIn has been a solid tool. Today I was reminded of one other reason I use it. It won't come as a shock to anyone who reads my blogs that I'm primarily a Mac user. My main workstation is a Mac Pro (running

A pair of security-related activities happening tomorrow, April 16. Just in time for CPAs across the US to start breathing normally again, there are a pair of webcasts that you may well be interested in. First, the April 2009 edition of the Third Tier Third Thursday webcast focuses on SSL Certificates in SBS 2008. I will be presenting a live demo of how SSL certificates work in SBS 2008 (surprise, it's different from SBS 2003) and discuss the pros and cons of using third-party SSL certs versus

Last Thursday , I posted that the ISA 2006 with SBS 2008 whitepaper had been published by Microsoft. Tonight, the paper will get a very small refresh and be linked from the SBS: MVP and Community Corner at TechNet . There have been a lot of questions in the community about how to configure ISA 2006 to work in front of SBS 2008, and this whitepaper should answer the vast majority of the questions on that topic.

Looking for a copy of SBS 2008 Unleashed in PDF format? You can purchase it directly from the publisher . Unfortunately Sams does not include electronic copies of their books when the actual books are purchased, but we did not have a PDF version of SBS 2003 Unleashed available at all, so this is a definite improvement.

Over the last few months I've been working with Microsoft to publish a whitepaper on how to install and configure ISA 2006 in front of an SBS 2008 network. That whitepaper is finally available for download . If you got ISA 2006 as part of the SBS 2003 Premium Software Assurance make good offer, or if you're looking to acquire and configure ISA 2006 on your own, the document will walk you through the process of installing and configuring ISA 2006 to publish and protect your SBS 2008 network