Bogus Emails: 3.4 Billion Are Sent Every Day...

Research from Valimail shows that at least 3.4 billion phony emails are sent every day, Help Net Security reports. Despite this staggering number, most organizations still aren’t enforcing email authentication protocols like DMARC.

The research found that nearly 80% of all email inboxes have DMARC enabled, but only 20% of these are configured to take action against spoofed emails. The US Federal government and tech companies account for a large portion of the organizations with DMARC enforcement policies. In most industries, the enforcement rate is lower than 10%.

The reason for this gap is primarily due to the fact that DMARC can be difficult to configure properly, particularly for large organizations. DMARC is initially set up in monitoring mode, so domains receive reports about spoofed emails, but they allow the messages to continue unperturbed. This mode is meant to help administrators, but it doesn’t do anything to prevent fraudulent emails from ending up in people’s inboxes.

In order for DMARC to actually have an effect, organizations need to enact enforcement policies that determine what to do with spoofed emails. The domain can then inform mail servers to discard these emails or place them in the recipient’s spam folder. Most organizations run into difficulties at this stage, and end up leaving the protocol in monitoring mode indefinitely.

DMARC is a highly recommended layer of defense for every organization, and it’s well worth the effort to get it working properly. However, it’s not bulletproof against determined attackers. New-school security awareness training can help your employees work with DMARC, while teaching them how to spot the phishing emails that slip through the cracks. Help Net Security has the story: https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2019/06/12/fake-emails/

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