Using AWS Simple Email Service (SES) for Inbound Mail

Oy! Good thing no one else can see THIS message!

We all know what a pain in the rump it is to setup, manage, and secure an inbound mail server.  It's a thankless job that is increasingly the point of attack for bad guys.  It's also possible that if you screw it up you might find yourself in front of Congress!

In our architectures, now more than ever, it is important to reduce the surface area for attacks. That means closing down as many access points to your network as possible.  SMTP running on port 25 is a gaping hole that most architects interested in securing their networks want turned off, like yesterday!

If you don't want to completely outsource your inbound mail to a managed service, AWS SES inbound email service is one way to have your cake and eat it too.   It's especially useful if you want to allow your application to receive mail but you don't necessarily want or need to host an email service that includes an IMAP or POP server.  You may only need to receive mail in which case AWS SES is the perfect solution.  Along with a scalable managed service, SES also includes spam filtering capabilities.

In this two part blog, we'll explore setting up a simple inbound mail handler for openbedrock.net using Amazon Web Services Simple Email Service (SES).