Public Notifications and Role Accounts

At this point, you believe you have created a highly scalable, highly resilient public e-mail infrastructure with several built-in security features. While that may be the case, there is always a chance for misconfiguration, a missed vulnerability patch, a previously unknown zero-day virus that infects before a virus definition can be released to protect against it, and many more potential threats to even the most resilient public e-mail infrastructure. What should administrators do to be good stewards of the Internet? Per RFC 2142, Mailbox Names for Common Services, Roles and Functions, proper mailboxes should be configured within an organization's e-mail system to accept e-mail for various roles. The RFC includes mailbox names for the following areas:

• Business Related

• Network Operations

• Support for Specific Internet Services

• Various Services (such as e-mailing Lists, DNS Administration, Autonomous System, etc.)

The areas important to an organization's technology infrastructure include Network Operations and Support for Specific Internet Services. These areas include the following mailboxes/role accounts that should be configured (if the service is available from the organization). These mailboxes/role accounts should map to an organization's domain(s). For example, the Vostrom organization would map the ABUSE mailbox to "[e-mail]" and make this e-mail address available publicly . This would be completed for each service below in use by an organization.

Service	Description
ABUSE	Used in Customer Relations to report inappropriate public behavior
NOC	Used in Network Operations to report issues or problems with an organization's network infrastructure
SECURITY	Used in Network Security to communicate security bulletins or queries
POSTMASTER	Used to communicate regarding the Simple e-mail Transfer Protocol service
HOSTMASTER	Used to communicate regarding the Domain Name System service
USENET	Used to communicate regarding the Network News Transfer Protocol service
NEWS	Used as a synonym for USENET
WEBMASTER	Used to communicate regarding the HTTP or web service
WWW	Used as a synonym for WEBMASTER
UUCP	Used to communicate regarding the Unix-to-Unix Copy Protocol service
FTP	Used to communicate regarding the File Transfer Protocol service

Not all mailboxes/accounts listed above must be implemented; however, according to RFCs 2142 and 822, some of these suggested names must be available (ABUSE in RFC 2142 and POSTMASTER in RFC 822), be character case-independent, and valid for the top-level domain only (however, valid e-mail addresses at subdomain levels are recommended). If an organization does not use a specific service, there is no need for a public e-mailbox/account. The purpose is to provide a uniform name for every organization, reducing the need to research contact information in the event an organization must be contacted regarding one or more of its services.