MXToolbox monitoring added

[Jason]

MXToolbox.com is a fantastic site that allows you to look up domain and email configurations as well as troubleshoot email issues (eg "blacklists").  I've been using their site for well over a decade.



We had an issue last week where an account was compromised and sent a lot of spam in a very quick time.  As mail providers get more efficient with their spam-blocking techniques, this leads to more headaches for someone like me in a sense that they block servers much more quickly than they used to.  Don't get me wrong, this is a great thing in terms of fighting spam but it means that web hosting companies have to react much more quickly than in the past to issues like this otherwise they risk their servers becoming "blacklisted."   In the case last week, we triggered a few blacklists for that particular server of our's which took a few hours to get reversed.

As of today, I've setup monitoring through MXToolbox to alert me (via email and text) if any of our servers get blacklisted anywhere.  They will check our servers every 4 hours against over 100+ blacklists and will let me know if any are found.

This doesn't stop the threat of us getting blacklisted but it means I'll potentially know about issues sooner.

How can you help?

• Use unique and complex passwords for all sites and logins you use.  I can't emphasize this one enough. As we hear almost weekly of huge security breaches and password compromises, I highly encourage everyone to not re-use passwords.  We have some other posts on our forums about some alternative options.  I still recommend Keepass, for example.
• Keep your website up to date.  If you run Wordpress, Joomla, etc, please make sure you stay current with new releases.  WordPress and Joomla often have 1-2 updates each month that are released.  
• Specific to WordPress: I'm a big fan of WordFence.  I recommend this plugin to everyone using WordPress.  I use it on all sites I manage.  

Questions or thoughts?  I'd love to hear them!

Cheers,
Jason


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edit:  fixed spelling error