2021 has been a tough year in terms of email security attacks and data breaches. Yet through all that, PowerDMARC is proud to receive the certificate of appreciation from Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University, in recognition of our sincere efforts and contributions to helping the institution overcome its email security challenges.
Recognizing the Problem
The educational sector is a prime target for hackers. And it’s not just because of its size—it’s because it’s an industry that shares many of the same vulnerabilities as other sectors.
One issue we’ve seen is email security. Universities and schools use email as a means of communication, but they also often use it to share information about students and staff members with other school districts or even parents. Unfortunately, this makes email an attractive target for cybercriminals who want to steal personal information about students or staff members for identity theft purposes or other malicious activities such as sending spam emails or installing malware on computers.
In order to help you better understand some of these challenges, we’ve compiled a list of common email security challenges in the educational sector:
1. Lack of understanding of email attack vectors
2. Inadequate training for staff members on how to respond to threats
3. Inadequate monitoring tools for detecting suspicious activity
Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University was looking to scale up its information security implementations to better protect the data of students and staff members. This was an important step toward ensuring that phishing and spoofing attacks were minimized and that there was no information leakage through email.
Coming up with a Solution
DMARC is a great solution for educational institutions. It allows institutions to determine whether or not an email sent from a student or faculty member is legitimate. The email will be sent back to the sender with a message stating that the email was not sent from the institution, and if it came from a different IP address, it will also be flagged as suspicious. This will stop phishing attacks on staff accounts, and make it harder for hackers to get into your system.
PowerDMARC’s full-stack email authentication suite was ideal for the university to deploy a well-rounded email protection plan. We made onboarding so much easier with our automated solutions that are built to minimize time and effort while pushing them towards achieving 100% DMARC compliance on emails.
Minimizing Risk
We heavily recommend organizations implement enforced email authentication policies since relaxed modes offer no protection. But, strict policies come at the risk of legitimate emails getting blocked.
Our DMARC experts closely monitor such inconsistencies to help institutions shift to p=reject, without compromising on deliverability.
The future of DMARC and email authentication in the Educational Sector: 2022 [Updated]
PowerDMARC is on a mission to secure the email communications of educational institutions with advanced email authentication solutions like DMARC, SPF, DKIM, MTA-STS, and BIMI. Our API can seamlessly integrate with existing infrastructures, providing whitelabeling opportunities for MSP/MSSPs.
The future holds new challenges in our way with cybercriminals coming up with evolved tactics to defraud victims, however, putting forth a dynamic email security plan with a multi-tenant dashboard for constant monitoring will continue to reduce the blow. Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University deployed our automated solutions to experience quick results with minimal efforts on their side, and you can too! Don’t believe us? Take a free DMARC trial to test it out yourself!
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