Iron Mountain Hosting is pleased to announce a further security enhancement available to all users of our email services.

We now use SSL/TLS encryption to secure all our outgoing and incoming mail whenever the responding server accepts it. In addition, users can take advantage of a more secure connection by setting up SSL/TLS encryption in their email settings.

Please follow this guide for setting up email in Outlook 2007.

For existing mail accounts:

1) Open up your Outlook and go to Account Settings and select the account you wish to enable SSL on

2) Click the CHANGE button which will open up a new Pop-Up box

3) Now click on Require secure authentication (SPA) if you like and then click More Settings

4) Now a new Internet E-Mail settings box will pop up with a few tabs across the top. As this is an existing mail account, all you will have to change is the Outgoing Server tab and the Advanced Tab. So first the Outgoing server tab, change it so it looks like this

Now, let’s change the Advanced Settings tab to look like this (NOTE: For IMAP, use port 993 instead of Pop3 995):

5) Once you have made those changes click OK. Then on the next screen, just click TEST ACCOUNT settings. Outlook will then ask you if you want to accept the SSL/Security certificate…say YES or Accept the certificate.

If all is well, the server will run a send and receive test and tell you that it passed the test. Just click next and FINISHED.

 Having been a solid Internet Explorer user for years, I was quite reluctant to try out the numerous alternative browser.  However, when IE started getting hit hard by spyware I figured enough was enough.  Switching to Firefox has been one of the best things I’ve ever done.  Since using Firefox, I’ve never gotten hit by spyware (knock on wood).  And the tabbed browsing was a godsend as an alternative to having a million Internet Explorer Windows open.

This year though, Microsoft came out with Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) which was a huge improvement over IE6 in terms of speed and security.  And what’s this, it actually has tabbed browsing now too. 

On top of this, the speed of IE7 is certainly faster than a stock Firefox setup.  So as my browsing taste started to lean towards IE7 over Firefox, I had to stop myself and see what I could do to speed up my beloved Firefox.   So let’s share what I’ve learned.

SPEED UP TIP:

1) Type “about:config” into the Firefox address bar and hit enter.

This will bring up your super advanced configuration settings for Firefox.  Now scroll down and look for these:

network.http.pipelining 

network.http.proxy.pipelining

network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

2. So our first change will make your browser access several components of a webpage at a time.  You’ll need to change these settings to:

Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”

Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”

Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to 25-30.

3. Now RIGHT CLICK anywhere in the white box

Select New-> Integer.

Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″.

That’s It!  Now you should experience much faster Firefox browsing because we’ve removed Firefox’s built in delays.  Like Firefox doesn’t start painting your page until it receives all the relevant information, now it’ll paint the page as it receives the info.

Enjoy your newer, faster and foxier FireFox!

Iron Mountain Hosting is a proud sponsor