Encryption

Postfix is a common software component on servers for receiving or sending email. It has a lot of configuration options available, including those to improve your Postfix security. This Postfix security and privacy guide will help with hardening your Postfix configuration.

After you are finished, your system will have improved defenses against spam, abuse, and leaking sensitive data.

Why Postfix hardening?

Every service that is connected to the internet is sooner or later to be abused by automated scripts. For example, an incorrectly Postfix might send messages to everyone, instead of just your network systems. This type of configuration is called an open relay. It will get your system ending up on multiple blacklists. If it is just a test system, then you are lucky. If your customers are depending on it, then you have something to explain.

Everyone has secrets. Or at least some data you don’t want to show others, right? Vim is a common editor to be found on Linux systems. It has an option to create and use encrypted files. We will look at how to configure it and use this encryption capability.

Encryption is the process of fiddling with data so that others no longer can’t read it. The idea is that you still can, so when we speak about encryption, we can’t ignore decryption. This also means that we need a good cryptographic algorithm. This way we can store our original file into an encrypted version. Then when we later need the data again, we can decrypt it.