Why is it so dangerous for government institutions to get scammed?
Millions of people rely on government notifications for things like taxes, municipal administration, and personal identification documents. These often come in the form of email sent to individuals by various government departments, many of which use your sensitive personal data or even financial data.
Given how official government-issued notifications cannot be ignored, users tend to open them and follow their instructions without bothering to check if they’re genuine or not. This opens up a huge range of possibilities for the potential attacker, including sending fake tax department forms to steal users’ financial information, requesting pending payments to the local government body, or even identity theft.
Although many government organizations around the world have made DMARC mandatory, there’s still a marked lack of serious enforcement even in more DMARC-forward countries like the UK, USA, the Netherlands, Norway and Australia.