Hitachi ID Systems, Inc.

Hitachi

Community Security Concepts
certification

Too many passwords?

Is your help desk slammed by password reset calls?

Read more about P-Synch.

Still waiting for a new account?

Does it take too long to provision new users with accounts? Are your systems cluttered with orphan accounts?

Read more about ID-Synch.

Definition of Mail Relay

A Mail Relay is a server, normally on the Internet, which can forward mail from its users to other mail servers. Most electronic mail, and most Mail Relay's, use the SMTP mail transfer protocol.

Since most mail client programs (e.g., Netscape, Eudora, Outlook) do not fully understand how to deliver mail, they generally rely on a Mail Relay to take care of mail delivery. Consequently, Mail Relay's are mandatory for most mail systems.

A potential security problem with Mail Relay is that, if they are not correctly configured, they will agree to relay mail sent by any user, from any network. This allows evil Spam-mers to forward mail through them, and thus make their Spam appear to have originated from the offending Mail Relay.