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Fail2ban is a great little tool for system administration. In a nutshell, it watches your log files for pre-defined patterns and then executes actions if it sees them. Ususally, this is of the form "if there are more than X failed authentication attempts in Y minutes from a single IP address, update the firewall to block the offending IP for Z minutes". The actions are not restricted to updating the firewall with iptables - you can also configure fail2ban to send notification emails, for example. This is useful for protecting against brute force attacks against services like:

• SSH (you should be using Publickey authentication if possible which will stop them ever guessing a password, but allowing them to try is still a waste of resources)
• SASL authentication attempts (Postfix and Dovecot)
• Login forms for web based services like Roundcube webmail.