The most exciting time of the year is also the most vulnerable time! Protect your emails from phishing and impersonation during Cyber Monday & Black Friday with DMARC.

The holiday season is right around the corner, with millions of customers marking their dates, especially in the days following Thanksgiving, and setting up reminders for the biggest budget shopping experience of the year! Black Friday and Cyber Monday are not just beneficial for customers, but also for hundreds of companies, major retail stores, and e-commerce platforms offering discounted deals during the holiday season that make their sales shoot up instantly. However, your sales are not the only things that shoot up during this time – so do fraudulent emails, phishing scams, and spoofing attempts that impersonate legitimate brands.

DMARC protection for Black Friday and Cyber Monday can take your email security from zero to a hundred in minutes, helping you pull up your defenses against impending phishing attacks during the holidays.

Key Takeaways

Black Friday and Cyber Monday see a significant rise in phishing and spoofing attacks exploiting seasonal shopping themes.
Cybercriminals use fake emails impersonating brands to lure victims with irresistible offers, steal information, or spread malware.
Email authentication (DMARC, SPF, DKIM) is essential to prevent domain spoofing, protect brand reputation, and maintain customer trust.
Monitoring DMARC reports helps identify spoofing attempts and manage email deliverability, with tools like SPF flattening aiding vendor management.
Implementing visual trust layers like BIMI alongside DMARC enhances email credibility and customer confidence by displaying verified brand logos.

Surge in Targeted Phishing Attacks during Black Friday

Kaspersky in their black friday cyber threat report for 2023 revealed the findings from their recent survey that detected 92,259 spam emails containing the keywords “Black Friday” within the first two weeks of November. This highlighted the surge in email phishing and email spoofing scams using discounted deals as the hook. Spoofing, a sophisticated form of impersonation, involves attackers targeting technical elements like IP addresses, DNS servers, or ARP services to make their fraudulent communications appear legitimate.

Black Friday Phishing Email

These days scammers are adept at curating emails that may look and feel genuine to the naked eye but contain a phishing lure or malicious link aimed at defrauding unsuspecting victims. In a Black Friday phishing attack:

Cybercriminals usually send emails disguising themselves as a legitimate company or service provide
The email might contain a lure that is too good to be true
The email might contain a phishing link – a malicious link or attachment that usually leads to a fake website page or starts downloading malware into your system

Cyber Monday e-commerce security threats are also equally rampant with attackers using unbelievable discounts and deals as lures to draw in victims. They would use the names of renowned social e-commerce platforms and online retail stores, showcasing high discount rates, amazing offers, coupons, and free gifts in their emails. Victims often can’t resist these lures, and fall for their malicious tactics, potentially leading to the spread of ransomware, unauthorized money transfers, or theft of confidential information.

General Black Friday Safety Tips for Email Receivers

If you receive suspicious emails with seasonal bargains on Black Friday, here are warning signs to look out for:

Companies launch email campaigns from their own domains, hence if the email sender is using a public domain you should proceed with caution
Malicious messages often lead to fake websites that may contain several visual errors that you can detect easily
Missing subject lines, a sense of urgency, and poorly written content are all indicators of malicious emails

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How Can This Impact Your Brand?

To make their fake emails look and sound genuine enough to scam millions of people, cybercriminals impersonate legitimate company domains. This means that a cyberattacker can forge your domain name (company.com) and use this to send hundreds of phishing emails from your own domain to your potential customers. These fake emails often bypass sophisticated spam filters to actually land in your clients’ inboxes and end up scamming them, potentially spreading ransomware or malware, instigating fraudulent money transfers, or stealing confidential customer information.

What happens then? In a situation like this, your customers may:

Lose trust in your brand
Blacklist your domain
Flag your emails as spam
Ignore your genuine marketing emails the next time they receive them

As a result of impersonation attacks like these, your legitimate messages may appear malicious to receivers. This will increase your email’s bounce rates, cause a surge in customer complaints, potentially lead to legal repercussions, and negatively impact your Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing campaigns, reducing your brand image and credibility in the eyes of your customers.

Take Back Control of Your Emails with DMARC

DMARC protection for Black Friday and Cyber Monday can help you get back control of your emails and prevent scammers from using your domain name to send fake discount offers to your customers. DMARC works alongside SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) to authenticate your emails.

Requirements for Email Senders:

Setup Email Authentication with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
Implement a DMARC policy of p=reject
Monitoring your sending sources with DMARC reports

Trust us, your recipients will thank you! DMARC or Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance, is an email authentication protocol that when configured at an enforcement level of “reject” allows you as the domain administrator to instruct the recipient of an email sent from your domain to reject the email if it fails to be verified as authentic via SPF or DKIM checks. Implementing DMARC reporting provides real-time visibility into email channels, allowing you to identify spoofing attempts, map threat geo-locations, and blacklist malicious IPs without negatively impacting your email deliverability rate. For organizations using multiple third-party email vendors, tools like SPF Flattening can help manage sender authentication without exceeding the 10 DNS lookup limit imposed by SPF.

Meeting stringent email authentication requirements filters out unqualified emails, keeping your receiver’s email inboxes spam-free, prevents potential email fraud, and strengthens your email communications with your clients

DMARC Cyber Monday protection directly puts the control back in your hands as it is much easier to enforce preventive measures against attackers impersonating your brand than expecting your recipients to stay vigilant under such circumstances.

Enhance Trust with BIMI

To provide your email domain with a second layer of authentication and visual credibility, consider implementing Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI). BIMI works with DMARC to display your verified brand logo next to your emails in supporting email clients’ inboxes. This standard affixes your exclusive brand logo on every email you send out to your customer base, letting them visually confirm it’s you and not an impersonator. BIMI enhances brand recall, reinforces brand image, increases credibility and reliability, and can improve email deliverability and engagement rates, further protecting your brand during high-risk periods like Black Friday.

DMARC Black Friday Protection with PowerDMARC

For the best DMARC protection on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, choose PowerDMARC. We are a DMARC and domain security solutions provider, dedicated to helping organizations around the world prevent email fraud and domain name impersonation. Thousands of customers have relied on our hosted email authentication services to protect their email domains against attacks during the holiday season – with amazing results!

To get started with your DMARC black friday protection you can sign up for our DMARC analyzer. This will aid you in:

Activating DMARC easily for your domains
Changing and updating your policy modes with the click of a button using our hosted DMARC
Monitoring your DMARC data with simplified, human-readable reports to detect sending sources impersonating your brand
Making a smooth transition to DMARC enforcement without compromising on your email deliverability

Email authentication can prove to be crucial during this time, allowing you to shield your brand from being abused amidst all the rush. It takes one bad email to permanently lose a customer, so take action before it’s too late – sign up today for a free DMARC trial!

About
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Ahona Rudra

Domain & Email Security Expert at PowerDMARC

Ahona is the Marketing Manager at PowerDMARC, with 5+ years of experience in writing about cybersecurity topics, specializing in domain and email security. Ahona holds a post-graduation degree in Journalism and Communications, solidifying her career in the security sector since 2019.

DMARC Black Friday: Fortify Your Emails This Holiday Season