RACE Spanish academic mail network TERENA workshop on Improving the quality of services Amsterdam, 9 December 2009 Evaluating the Best Current Practices to Improve Quality Jesus Sanz de las Heras

Index Background RedIRIS mail services What RACE does it mean for RedIRIS and universities? RACE achievements RACE methodology RACE technical criteria 2

Background activities RedIRIS has been working for the last 15 years on coordinating a working group to improve e- mail services for the Spanish academic community: IRIS-MAIL This strong coordination has allowed us to generate knowledge and experience, as well as permitted the implementation of many initiatives and services 3

Previous activities Iniciatives and services such as:  Online configurators for sendmail and postfix (1999)  Sensors network for virus and spam stats (2002)  Centralized access Webmail to all RedIRIS institutions (2000)  Collaborative evaluation of security appliances (2007)  Difusion of SPF (2005) and DKIM (2007) technologies 4

Current activities  Reputation services of IPs Spamtraps networks Spanish Whitelist ( DNS black list service: IRISRBL ( )  Recommendations to improve Webmail users’ experiences such as: Zimbra, Horde, OpenXchange etc  External monitoring of mail services (SMTP,POP,IMAP etc) 5

What is RACE? RACE has differents approaches: It is a dynamic Best Current Practices guide It is an evaluation methodology It is a uniform strategy for RedIRIS mail comunity It’s a guideline to evolve together And also … its like a game 6

Objetives for RedIRIS Collect mail technical knowledge and experience of the community to define the best current practices Define a uniform strategy Create a tool for measuring the quality of mail service Be a reference guide in order to evolve and migrate services Create a best current practices Guide for new techies RACE acreditation and certification for universities 7

Objetives for institutions Academic environment is almost homogeneous RACE acreditation offers:  External evaluation of their services  Universities likes to receive experiences, ideas or comments from other similar institutions  Guarantee of work done for techies  Valued by users and managers 8

RACE: achievements RACE iniciative has permitted  A uniform development of mail services  An evaluation of new mail technologies  The establishment of a basis to evaluate other services such as: security, eduroam etc  The creation of a real social network around academic mail services 9

RACE. Criteria RACE has 33 technical criteria Each item has a weight (points) Criteria are annually reviewed and updated Criteria don’t define the implementation There are some mandatory criteria (legal or RFCs):  Anti-relay  Logs policy  Reverse DNS records  Abuse and postmaster mailbox 10

RACE. Weight and Criteria points Basic level Medium level Advanced level 500 points 1600 points 2700 points Mandatory

RACE Evaluation Team of ten volunteers RACE coordinator (Rediris person)  Nominates two evaluators for each evaluation, who are previously evaluated techies  Updates tools for RACE evaluation  Manages and update documentation to evaluators Evaluators and the evaluated get in touch Evaluators must fill out a technical report template 12

RACE Evaluation When finished evaluation, coordinator:  Review techical people  Send a postal acreditation  Include institution into a RACE directory 13

RACE technical criteria Evaluating the Best Current Practices to Improve Quality

Guide (criteria) Directory RACE Universities RACE RACE. Overview Routing SMTP Servers Platfom Services Security and Authetication RACE Acreditation Technical report RACE online (under construction) Evaluation Metodology

16 CriteriaDescription Routing SMTPCriteria related with inbound SMTP Servers platformRequiered resources to support a mail service quality. Security and authetication Security criterias to ensure, authentication integrity and privacy of mail data Value-added servicesBasic and value- added services OthersOther criterias Classification criteria RACE

RACE criteria for routing SMTP Anti-relay rules Reverse DNS recordsMessage size limit Spanish Whitelist User unknown controlControls for SMTP mail flow Port 25 control for in/outbound SMTP Minimun and maximun number of recipients Mail Log policy SPF DNS record and checkin SPF Criteria for routing SMTP

RACE criteria for SMTP servers platform Criteria for SMTP servers platform RedIRIS NTP Synchronization High-Availability Load Balancing 100

RACE criteria for security and authetication Criteria for security and authentication Internal Secure transaction (MTA) Central authentication Secure POPs, IMAPs, External Secure transaction (MTA) Submision servicie (587)

RACE criteria for value-added services Criteria for value-added services Public Mail Aceptable Use Policy mailbox AntiVirus MTA Secure remote acces (Webmail, vpn, ssh tunnels) Policy backup of mailbox Online password change AntiSpam MTA Custom antispam Vacation services Forwarding (-) Mailing list service