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Tag Archive for: Email authentication

DMARC Implementation Guide: 8 Steps to Implement DMARC

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Email is like the trusty sidekick for businesses, big or small, when it comes to communication. But here’s the thing: cyber attackers have a thing for targeting emails. They see it as an opportunity to wreak havoc. One of the most effective ways to protect your organization from these email-based attacks is to implement DMARC.

You can implement DMARC manually, however, it is not recommended due to the technical complexities involved in the process and the lack of visibility and management. You can sign up with PowerDMARC to automate the DMARC implementation process, as well as manage and monitor your protocol policies from a single interface. 

How to Implement DMARC for Your Domains?

Step 1: Understand DMARC

Familiarize yourself with the DMARC protocol and how it works. DMARC builds upon existing email authentication methods, such as SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail).

email with dmarc

Step 2: Assess your email infrastructure

Evaluate your current email infrastructure to determine if you have control over the sending domains and can implement SPF and DKIM. Ensure you have access to DNS (Domain Name System) records for your domain.

Assess your email infrastructure

Step 3: Set up SPF or DKIM or Both

Implement SPF and/or DKIM for your domain. SPF defines the authorized email servers that can send emails on behalf of your domain, while DKIM adds a digital signature to the email headers, verifying the email’s authenticity.

dmarc dkim spf report

Step 4:Generate Your DMARC record 

You can create your record for DMARC for free by signing up on the PowerDMARC portal and going to PowerToolbox > DMARC record generator

Generate Your DMARC record

Step 5: Define Your DMARC Policy

Initially, set your DMARC policy to “none” to collect data and monitor email traffic without impacting email delivery. Once you have reviewed the reports and ensured legitimate email sources are aligned with SPF and DKIM, gradually enforce a stricter policy, such as “quarantine” or “reject,” to mitigate unauthorized or fraudulent emails.

DMARC policy

Step 6: Publish DMARC records

Create a DMARC record (DNS TXT record) for your domain in the DNS by accessing your DNS management console. This record should be published on the subdomain _dmarc.yourdomain.com.  This record specifies your DMARC policy and provides instructions to receiving email servers on how to handle emails that fail SPF and DKIM checks.

Add-a-TXT-type-record

Step 7: Monitor and analyze DMARC reports

Configure your DMARC policy to generate and receive aggregate and forensic reports. These DMARC reports provide valuable insights into how your domain is being used for email, allowing you to identify and address any unauthorized or fraudulent activities. PowerDMARC customers receive regular parsed, human-readable reports on the DMARC report analyzer dashboard to easily resolve deliverability issues and monitor authentication failures. 

Protecting Your Domain Against Online Threats

Step 8: Maintain and monitor DMARC

You can continuously monitor your DMARC reports and adjust your policies as needed with our DMARC analyzer tool. Regularly review the reports for any issues, such as misconfigured email sources or potential spoofing attempts.

powerdmarc dmarc data simplified

Benefits of implementing DMARC

Implementing DMARC comes with some awesome perks! It’s like having your own personal bodyguard for your emails. Here are a few benefits you can expect:

  • Fortified Cybersecurity: DMARC acts as a shield, safeguarding your organization from email-based cyberattacks like phishing and spoofing.
  • Enhanced Brand Protection: By authenticating your emails, DMARC prevents scammers from using your domain to deceive your customers and damage your brand reputation.
  • Increased Email Deliverability: With DMARC in place, your legitimate emails are more likely to reach the recipients’ inboxes instead of getting lost in spam folders.
  • Better Customer Trust: When your emails are protected by DMARC, your customers feel more confident knowing that they are interacting with genuine and secure communications.
  • Insightful Reporting: DMARC provides valuable feedback on email delivery and any attempted unauthorized use of your domain, allowing you to take proactive measures.

So, by implementing DMARC, you’re not only protecting your business but also building trust, enhancing deliverability, and staying one step ahead of those cyber baddies!

How to implement DMARC More Easily and Effectively with PowerDMARC?

PowerDMARC, as your DMARC service provider, offers much more than email authentication services. This is because we realize that information security is a vast domain and simply publishing your DMARC record isn’t enough to gear up against the rising rate of domain spoofing attacks, email phishing, and BEC. We strive to make email authentication easier and more accessible to enterprises of all sizes.

  • We simplify DMARC aggregate reports from complex XML files to simple, readable tables and charts for ease of understanding
  • We encrypt your forensic reports with your own private key that even we don’t have access to
  • We offer scheduled DMARC PDF reports that you can share with your employees, generated automatically as well as on demand
  • Our multi-tenant SaaS platform assembles an array of authentication protocols like BIMI, MTA-STS, and TLS-RPT apart from the standard authentication practices
  • We also help you evade multiple SPF flattening problems and SPF implementation errors like exceeding the SPF 10 lookup limit

Hopefully, this blog helped you configure how to implement DMARC for your domain. Sign up with PowerDMARC’s free DMARC analyzer tool to give your domain reputation and email deliverability a significant boost today!

implement dmarc

May 25, 2023/by Ahona Rudra

How to fix “No SPF record found” ?

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If you are on this page reading this blog, chances are that you have come across either one of the following prompts:

  • No SPF record found
  • SPF record is missing
  • No SPF record
  • SPF record not found
  • No SPF record published
  • Unable to find SPF record

The prompt simply signifies that your domain is not configured with the SPF email authentication standard. An SPF record is a DNS TXT record that is published in your domain’s DNS to authenticate messages by checking them against the authorized IP addresses that are allowed to send emails on behalf of your domain, included in your SPF record. So naturally, if your domain is not authenticated with SPF protocol you might come across a “No SPF record found” message.

What is Sender Policy Framework (SPF)?

SPF email authentication standard is a mechanism used to prevent spammers from forging emails. It uses DNS records to verify that the sending server is allowed to send emails from the domain name.  SPF, which stands for Sender Policy Framework, allows you to identify permitted senders of emails on your domain.

SPF is a “path-based” authentication system, implying that it is related to the path that the email takes from the original sending server to the receiving server. SPF not only allows organizations to authorize IP addresses to use its domain names when sending out emails but also provides a way that a receiving email server can check that authorization.

Do I Need to Configure SPF?

You’ve probably been told that you need SPF (Sender Policy Framework) email authentication. But does a business really need it? And if so, are there any other benefits? That question is usually understood when the enterprise becomes a large e-mail exchanger for their organization. With SPF, you can track email behavior to detect fraudulent messages and protect your business from spam-related issues, spoofing and phishing attacks. SPF helps you achieve maximum deliverability and brand protection by verifying the identity of the senders.

How Does SPF Function?

  • SPF records are specially formatted Domain Name System (DNS) records published by domain administrators that define which mail servers are authorized to send mail on behalf of that domain.
  • With SPF configured for your domain, whenever an email is sent from your domain the recipient’s mail server looks up the specifications for the return-path domain in the
  • DNS. It subsequently tried to match the IP address of the sender to the authorized addresses defined in your SPF record.
  • According to the SPF policy specifications, the receiving server then decides whether to deliver, reject or flag the email in case it fails authentication.

Breaking Down the Syntax of an SPF Record

Let’s take the example of an SPF record for a dummy domain with the correct syntax:

v=spf1  ip4:29.337.148 include:domain.com -all

 

implement dmarc

Stopping the “No SPF Record Found” Message

If you want to stop getting the annoying “No SPF record found” prompt all you need to do is configure SPF for your domain by publishing a DNS TXT record. You can use our free SPF record generator to create an instant record with the correct syntax, to publish in your DNS.

All you need to do is:

  • Choose if you want to allow servers listed as MX to send emails for your domain
  • Choose if you want to allow the current IP address of the domain to send an email for this domain
  • Fill in the IP addresses authorized to send emails from your domain
  • Add any other server hostnames or domains that may deliver or relay mail for your domain
  • Choose your SPF policy mode or the level of strictness of the receiving server from Fail (non-compliant emails will be rejected), Soft-fail (Non-compliant emails will be accepted but marked), and Neutral (Mails will probably be accepted)
  • Click on Generate SPF Record to instantly create your record

implement dmarc

In case you already have SPF configured for your domain, you can also use our free SPF record checker to lookup and validate your SPF record and detect issues.

“No valid SPF record found” / “No valid SPF record”

A similar variation to the “no SPF record found” error is the “no valid SPF record found” error. This means that while there is an SPF record present on your DNS, it just isn’t valid. This may be a result of a syntax error and redundant or invalid mechanisms in your record.

A solution around this would be to:

  • Check your record using an online tool
  • Optimize the record to remove existing errors
  • Discuss the issue with your ESPs
  • If all else fails, outsource management to an external service provider, or contact us to talk to an email authentication expert

Is Publishing an SPF Record Enough?

The answer is no. SPF alone cannot prevent your brand from being impersonated. For optimal protection against direct-domain spoofing, phishing attacks, and BEC, you need to configure DKIM and DMARC for your domain.

Furthermore, SPF has a limit of 10 DNS lookups. If you exceed this limit your SPF will break and authentication will fail for even legitimate emails. This is why you need a dynamic SPF flattener that will help your stay under the 10 DNS lookup limit, as well as keep you updated on changes made by your email exchange providers.

Hopefully this blog helped you resolve your problem and you never have to worry about the “No SPF record found” message bothering you again. Sign up for a free email authentication trial to improve your email deliverability and email security today!

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January 2, 2023/by Ahona Rudra

What is DMARC Vulnerability?

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DMARC records when configured in the right way can benefit you in more ways than one. It is a new realm in email security that offers domain owners a wealth of information about their email sending sources and performance. DMARC vulnerability refers to very common errors that users make while implementing the protocol or enforcing it. 

Vulnerabilities in your email authentication system can range from simple errors like wrong syntax to more complex errors. Either way, unless you troubleshoot these issues and set up your protocol correctly, it may invalidate your email security efforts. 

Before we analyze the possible vulnerabilities that you may encounter on your email authentication journey, let’s do a quick run-through of a few basic concepts. They are:

  1. What is email authentication?
  2. How does DMARC authenticate your emails?
  3. The impact of DMARC vulnerabilities on your message deliverability

What is Email Authentication?

implement dmarc

Cybercriminals can extract financial benefits by intercepting email communications or using social engineering to defraud unsuspecting victims. 

Email authentication refers to specific verification systems domain owners can configure to establish the legitimacy of emails sent from their domain. This can be done by digital signatures placed in the message body, verification of Return-path addresses, and/or identifier alignment. 

Once the authentication checks confirm the legitimacy of the message, the email gets dropped into the receiver’s inbox. 

How does DMARC authenticate your emails?

When a company sends a message to its users, the email travels from the sending server to the receiving server to complete its deliverability journey. This email has a Mail From: header which is the visible header displaying the email address the email has been sent from and a Return-path header which is a hidden header containing the Return-path address.

An attacker can spoof the company domain to send emails from the same domain name, however, it is much more difficult for them to mask the Return-path address. 

Let’s take a look at this suspicious email:

implement dmarc

While the email address associated with the message seems to be coming from [email protected] which feels genuine, on inspecting the Return-path address it can be quickly established that the bounce address is completely unrelated to company.com and was sent from an unknown domain. 

This bounce address (aka Return-path address) is used by email receiving servers to look up a sender’s SPF record while verifying DMARC. If the sender’s DNS contains the IP address that matches the IP of the sent email, SPF and subsequently DMARC passes for it, else it fails. Now according to the DMARC policy configured by the sending domain, the message may get rejected, quarantined, or delivered. 

Alternatively, DMARC may also check for DKIM identifier alignment to verify an email’s authenticity.

The impact of DMARC vulnerabilities on your message deliverability

The probability of your messages being delivered to your clients is hugely dependent on how accurately you have configured your protocol. Existing vulnerabilities in your organization’s email security posture can weaken the chances of your messages being delivered. 

Certain clear indications of loopholes in your DMARC authentication system are as follows:

  • Problems in email deliverability
  • Legitimate messages being marked as spam 
  • DMARC error prompts while using online tools 

Types of DMARC Vulnerabilities 

DMARC vulnerability #1: Syntactical errors in DNS records

implement dmarc

A DMARC record is a TXT record with mechanisms separated by semicolons that specify certain instructions to email receiving MTAs. Given below is an example: 

v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:[email protected]; pct=100;

Small details such as the mechanism separators (;) play an important role in determining if your record is valid, and thus, cannot be overlooked. This is why to do away with the guesswork, we recommend that you use our free DMARC record generator tool to create an accurate TXT record for your domain.

DMARC vulnerability #2: No DMARC record found / DMARC record missing vulnerability

implement dmarc

Domain owners may often come across a message while using online tools, prompting that their domain is missing a DMARC record. This can occur if you don’t have a valid record published on your DNS. 

DMARC helps you protect your domain and organization against a wide range of attacks including phishing and direct domain spoofing. Living in a digital world with threat actors trying to intercept email communications every step of the way, we need to exercise caution and implement preventive measures to stop these attacks. DMARC aids in that process to promote a safer email environment.

We have covered a detailed article on fixing the no DMARC record found vulnerability which you can refer to by clicking on the link.

DMARC vulnerability #3: Policy at none: monitoring only

implement dmarc

A frequent misapprehension among users is that a DMARC policy at p=none is enough to protect their domain against attacks. In reality, only an enforced policy of reject/quarantine can help you build up your defenses against spoofing. 

A relaxed policy can however be fruitful if you only want to monitor your email channels, without enforcing protection. It is however recommended that you make a quick shift to p=reject once you are confident. 

We have placed this under the DMARC vulnerability category based on the criterion that most users implement DMARC to gain a higher degree of protection against attacks. Therefore, a policy with zero enforcement can be of no value to them.

DMARC vulnerability #4: DMARC policy not enabled

Similar to the previous vulnerability, this error prompt can often be a result of the lack of an enforced policy for DMARC. If you have set up your domain with a none policy, making it vulnerable to phishing attacks, it is a recommended practice to shift to p=reject/quarantine as soon as possible. To do so, you need only make a small tweak to your existing DNS record to modify and upgrade your policy mode. 

We have covered a detailed document on how to resolve the DMARC policy not enabled error which you can view by clicking on the link.

Troubleshooting DMARC vulnerabilities in real-time

To fix these issues you can consider implementing the following steps at your organization:

  1. Make a list of all your authorized email sending sources and configure a DMARC monitoring tool to track them daily or from time to time
  2. Have a discussion with your email vendors to substantiate whether they support email authentication practices
  3. Learn about SPF, DKIM, and DMARC in detail before you move on to the next steps.
  4. Make sure your SPF record is devoid of SPF Permerror by implementing an SPF flattening tool
  5. Make your protocol implementation process seamless with expert insights and guidance from DMARC specialists by signing up for a free DMARC analyzer. This can help you shift to p=reject safely with real-time vulnerability and attack detection.

Protecting your domain is one of the primitive steps towards preserving your reputation and upholding your credibility. Make email security a part of your security posture today!

implement dmarc

March 1, 2022/by Syuzanna Papazyan

How to Leverage Email Authentication Solutions (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC) to Stop Email Spoofing?

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Email authentication standards: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are showing promise in cutting down on email spoofing attempts and improving email deliverability. While differentiating spoofed (fake) emails from legitimate ones, email authentication standards go further in distinguishing if an email is legitimate by verifying the identity of the sender.

As more organizations adopt these standards, the overall message of trust and authority in email communication will begin to reassert itself. Every business that depends on email marketing, project requests, financial transactions, and the general exchange of information within or across companies needs to understand the basics of what these solutions are designed to accomplish and what benefits they can get out of them.

What is Email Spoofing?

Email spoofing is a common cybersecurity issue encountered by businesses today. In this article, we will understand how spoofing works and the various methods to fight it. We will learn about the three authentication standards used by email providers − SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to stop it from happening.

Email spoofing can be classified as an advanced social engineering attack that uses a combination of sophisticated techniques to manipulate the messaging environment and exploit legitimate features of email. These emails will often appear entirely legitimate, but they are designed with the intention of gaining access to your information and/or resources. Email spoofing is used for a variety of purposes ranging from attempts to commit fraud, to breach security, and even to try to gain access to confidential business information. As a very popular form of email forgery, spoofing attacks aim to deceive recipients into believing that an email was sent from a business they use and can trust, instead of the actual sender. As emails are increasingly being sent and received in bulk, this malicious form of email scam has increased dramatically in recent years.

How can Email Authentication Prevent Spoofing?

Email authentication helps you verify email sending sources with protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to prevent attackers from forging domain names and launch spoofing attacks to trick unsuspecting users. It provides verifiable information on email senders that can be used to prove their legitimacy and specify to receiving MTAs what to do with emails that fail authentication.

Hence, to enlist the various benefits of email authentication, we can confirm that SPF, DKIM, and DMARC aid in:

  • Protecting your domain from phishing attacks, domain spoofing, and BEC
  • Providing granular information and insights on email sending sources
  • Improving domain reputation and email deliverability rates
  • Preventing your legitimate emails from being marked as spam

How Do SPF, DKIM, and DMARC Work Together to Stop Spoofing?

Sender Policy Framework

SPF is an email authentication technique used to prevent spammers from sending messages on behalf of your domain. With it, you can publish authorized mail servers, giving you the ability to specify which email servers are permitted to send emails on behalf of your domain. An SPF record is stored in the DNS, listing all the IP addresses that are authorized to send mail for your organization.

If you want to leverage SPF in a way that would ensure its proper functioning, you need to ensure that SPF doesn’t break for your emails. This could happen in case you exceed the 10 DNS lookup limit, causing SPF permerror. SPF flattening can help you stay under the limit and authenticate your emails seamlessly.

DomainKeys Identified Mail

Impersonating a trusted sender can be used to trick your recipient into letting their guard down. DKIM is an email security solution that adds a digital signature to every message that comes from your customer’s inbox, allowing the receiver to verify that it was indeed authorized by your domain and enter your site’s trusted list of senders.

DKIM affixes a unique hash value, linked to a domain name, to each outgoing email message, allowing the receiver to check that an email claiming to have come from a specific domain was indeed authorized by the owner of that domain or not. This ultimately helps to pick up on spoofing attempts.

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance

Simply implementing SPF and DKIM can help verify sending sources but isn’t effective enough to stop spoofing on their own. In order to stop cybercriminals from delivering fake emails to your recipients, you need to implement DMARC today. DMARC helps you align email headers to verify email From addresses, exposing spoofing attempts and fraudulent use of domain names. Moreover, it gives domain owners the power to specify to email receiving servers how to respond to emails failing SPF and DKIM authentication. Domain owners can choose to deliver, quarantine, and reject fake emails based on the degree of DMARC enforcement they need.

Note: Only a DMARC policy of reject allows you to stop spoofing.

Additionally, DMARC also offers a reporting mechanism to provide domain owners with visibility on their email channels and authentication results. By configuring your DMARC report analyzer, you can monitor your email domains on a regular basis with detailed information on email sending sources, email authentication results, geolocations of fraudulent IP addresses, and the overall performance of your emails. It helps you parse your DMARC data into an organized and readable format, and take action against attackers faster.

Ultimately, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC can work together to help you catapult your organization’s email security to new heights, and stop attackers from spoofing your domain name to safeguard your organization’s reputation and credibility.

implement dmarc

June 15, 2021/by Ahona Rudra

Is DMARC Required? 5 Reasons to Immediately Implement DMARC!

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Is DMARC Required?

If you run an organization that makes use of a substantial amount of email flow on a daily basis, chances are you have already come across the term “DMARC”. So what is DMARC? Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance is your email checkpoint on your receiver’s side that helps you authenticate your outbound emails as well as respond to situations where these emails have questionable legitimacy. DMARC offers several advantages and it is especially useful in today’s world where remote-working environments are being adopted and electronic communication has become the most commonly used method of interaction for businesses. Let’s list down the 5 important reasons why is DMARC required in the context of today:

1) DMARC Helps Mitigate Impersonation Attacks

Ever since the news of the COVID-19 vaccine broke out worldwide in February 2021, cyber attackers took advantage of the situation to create forged emails using authentic company domains, offering vaccine lures to employees and customers. Several users, especially aged citizens fell victim to the lures and ended up losing money. This explains why is DMARC required now more than ever.

A new form of BEC (Business Email Compromise) has recently taken the internet by storm, exploiting loopholes in Microsoft 365’s read receipts and manipulating authentication protocols to evade spam filters and security gateways. Sophisticated social engineering attacks like these can easily bypass robust security measures and trick unsuspecting customers into submitting their credentials.

DMARC minimizes the chances of BEC and domain spoofing attacks and helps secure your emails from fraud and impersonation. This is because DMARC works differently than your ordinary integrated security gateways that come with your cloud-based email exchange services, offering a way for domain owners to decide how they want receiving servers to respond to emails failing SPF/DKIM email authentication protocols.

2) DMARC Improves Email Deliverability

When your email domain gets spoofed, your receivers who have been interacting with your brand  for years are the last people to be suspicious of fraudulent activities from your side. Hence, they readily open the spoofed emails and fall prey to these attacks. However, the next time they receive an email from you, even if the message is authentic and from an authorized source they would be reluctant to open your email. This will drastically impact your email deliverability, as well as your company’s email marketing strategies and agendas.

However, DMARC can improve email deliverability by almost 10% over time! DMARC is required for you to remain in complete control of your domain by choosing which messages get delivered to your recipients’ inboxes. This keeps illegitimate emails at bay and makes sure legitimate emails always get delivered without delay.

3) DMARC Aggregate Reports Help You Gain Visibility

DMARC Aggregate reports can help you view your authentication results and mitigate errors in email delivery at a faster pace. It helps you gain insight on sending sources and IP addresses that are sending emails on behalf of your domain and failing authentication. This helps you track down malicious IP addresses as well, explaining why is DMARC required.

PowerDMARC’s DMARC aggregate reports are available in 7 distinctive views on the platform that helps you gain an unfiltered perspective on your email sending sources and hostnames, like never before! Additionally, we provide you with the option to instantly convert your DMARC reports into PDF documents that you can share with your whole team, as well as create a schedule for them to be emailed to you at regular intervals.

4) DMARC Forensic Reports Help You Respond to Forensic Incidents

DMARC forensic reports are generated whenever a forensic incident is triggered, such as when the outbound email fails SPF or DKIM authentication. Such an incident may be triggered in case of domain spoofing attacks when an email domain is forged by an impersonator using a malicious IP address to send a fraudulent message to an unsuspecting receiver that appears to be coming from an authentic source they know and can trust. Forensic reports provide in-detail analysis of malicious sources that may have attempted to spoof you, so that you can take action against them and prevent future incidents.

Note that forensic reports are highly detailed and may contain your mail body. However, you can avoid disclosing your email contents while viewing your DMARC forensic reports by encrypting your reports with a private key that only you have access to, with PowerDMARC.

5) DMARC Helps Improve Your Domain Reputation

A good domain reputation is like a feather in your cap, as the domain owner. A good domain reputation indicates to receiving email servers that your emails are legitimate and from reliable sources and hence are less likely to be marked as spam or land up in the junk folder. DMARC helps you improve your domain reputation by validating your message sources and indicates that your domain has extended support towards secure protocols by implementing standard email authentication practices like SPF and DKIM.

With this, it is evident why is DMARC required, and can prove to be beneficial for your business! So the next step is :

How to Configure DMARC for Your Domain?

PowerDMARC’s DMARC Analyzer can help you implement DMARC in 4 easy steps:

  • Publish your SPF, DKIM and DMARC record in your domain’s DNS
  • Sign up with PowerDMARC to gain access to your DMARC aggregate and forensic reports and monitor your email flow
  • Shift from a policy of monitoring to DMARC enforcement, to gain maximum protection against BEC and spoofing
  • Stay under the SPF 10 lookup limit with PowerSPF

Sign up today for your free DMARC Analyzer and avail of the multiple benefits of DMARC today!

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March 30, 2021/by Ahona Rudra

How to Effectively Prevent Email Spoofing in 2021?

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Email spoofing is a growing problem for an organization’s security. Spoofing occurs when a hacker sends an email that appears to have been sent from a trusted source/domain. Email spoofing isn’t a new concept. Defined as “the forgery of an email address header in order to make the message appear to be sent from someone or somewhere other than the actual source,” it has plagued brands for decades. Whenever an email is sent, the From address doesn’t display what server the email was actually sent from—instead it displays whatever domain is entered during the address creation process, thereby raising no suspicion among email recipients.

With the amount of data passing through email servers today, it should come as no surprise that spoofing is an issue for businesses.At the end of 2020,  we found that phishing incidents rose by a staggering 220% compared to the yearly average during the height of global pandemic fears.. Since not all spoofing attacks are carried out on a large scale, the actual number could be much higher. It is 2021, and the problem seems to be only worsening with each passing year. This is why brands are availing of secure protocols to authenticate their emails and steer clear of the malicious intentions of threat actors.

Email Spoofing: What Is It and How Does It Work?

Email spoofing is used in phishing attacks to trick users into thinking the message came from a person or entity they either know or can trust. A cybercriminal uses a spoofing attack to trick recipients into thinking the message came from someone it didn’t. This lets attackers harm you without letting you trace them back. If you see an email from the IRS saying that they sent your refund to a different bank account, it may be a spoofing attack. Phishing attacks can also be carried out via email spoofing, which is a fraudulent attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details (PIN numbers), often for malicious ends. The term comes from ‘fishing’ for a victim by pretending to be trustworthy.

In SMTP, when outgoing messages are assigned a sender address by the client application; outbound emails servers have no way to tell if the sender address is legitimate or spoofed. Hence, email spoofing is possible because the email system used to represent email addresses does not provide a way for outgoing servers to verify that the sender address is legitimate. This is why large industry players are opting for protocols like SPF, DKIM and DMARC to authorize their legitimate email addresses, and minimize impersonation attacks.

Breaking Down the Anatomy of an Email Spoofing Attack

Each email client uses a specific application program interface (API) to send email. Some applications allow users to configure the sender address of an outgoing message from a drop- down menu containing email addresses. However, this ability can also be invoked using scripts written in any language. Each open mail message has a sender address that displays the address of the originating user’s email application or service. By reconfiguring the application or service, an attacker can send email on behalf of any person.

Let’s just say that now it is possible to send thousands of fake messages from an authentic email domain! Moreover, you don’t have to be an expert in programming to use this script. Threat actors can edit the code according to their preference and begin sending a message using another sender’s email domain. This is exactly how an email spoofing attack is perpetrated.

Email Spoofing as a Vector of Ransomware

Email spoofing paves the way for the spread of malware and ransomware. If you don’t know what ransomware is, it is a malicious software which perpetually blocks access to your sensitive data or system and demands an amount of money (ransom) in exchange for decrypting your data again. Ransomware attacks make organizations and individuals lose tons of money every year and lead to huge data breaches.

DMARC and email authentication also acts as the first line of defense against ransomware by protecting your domain from the malicious intentions of spoofers and impersonators.

Threats Involved for Small, Medium and Large Businesses

Brand identity is vital to a business’s success. Customers are drawn to recognizable brands and rely on them for consistency. But cybercriminals use anything they can to take advantage of this trust, jeopardizing your customers’ safety with phishing emails, malware, and email spoofing activities. The average organization loses between $20 and $70 million a year due to email fraud. It is important to note that spoofing can involve trademark and other intellectual property violations as well, inflicting a considerable amount of damage to a company’s reputation and credibility, in the following two ways:

implement dmarc

  • Your partners or esteemed customers can open a spoofed email and end up compromising their confidential data. Cybercriminals can inject ransomware into their system leading to financial losses, through spoofed emails posing to be you. Therefore the next time they might be reluctant to open even your legitimate emails, making them lose faith in your brand.
  • Recipient email servers can flag your legitimate emails as spam and lodge them in the junk folder due to deflation in server reputation, thereby drastically impacting your email deliverability rate.

Either ways, without an ounce of doubt, your customer-facing brand will be on the receiving end of all complications. Despite the efforts of IT professionals, 72% of all cyber attacks begin with a malicious email, and 70% of all data breaches involve social engineering tactics to spoof company domains – making email authentication practices like DMARC, a critical priority.

DMARC: Your One-Stop Solution against Email Spoofing

Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) is an email authentication protocol which when implemented correctly can drastically minimize email spoofing, BEC and impersonation attacks. DMARC works in unison with two standard authentication practices- SPF and DKIM, to authenticate outbound messages, providing a way to specify to receiving servers how they should respond to emails failing authentication checks.

Read more about what is DMARC?

If you want to protect your domain from the malicious intentions of spoofers, the first step is to implement DMARC correctly. But before you do so, you need to set up SPF and DKIM for your domain. PowerDMARC’s free SPF and DKIM record generators can aid you in generating  these records to be published in your DNS, with a single click. After successfully configuring these protocols, go through the following steps to implement DMARC:

  • Generate an error-free DMARC record using PowerDMARC’s free DMARC record generator
  • Publish the record in your domain’s DNS
  • Gradually move to a DMARC enforcement policy of p=reject
  • Monitor your email ecosystem and receive detailed authentication aggregate and forensic (RUA/RUF) reports with our DMARC analyzer tool

Limitations to Overcome While Achieving DMARC Enforcement

You have published an error-free DMARC record, and moved to a policy of enforcement, and yet you are facing issues in email delivery? The problem can be far more complicated than you think. If you didn’t already know, your SPF authentication protocol has a limit of 10 DNS lookups. However, if you used cloud-based email service providers and various third-party vendors, you can easily exceed this limit. As soon as you do so, SPF breaks and even legitimate emails fail authentication, leading your emails to land in the junk folder or not being delivered at all.

As your SPF record gets invalidated due to too many DNS lookups, your domain again becomes vulnerable to email spoofing attacks and BEC. Therefore staying under the SPF 10 lookup limit is imperative to ensure  email deliverability. This is why we recommend PowerSPF, your automatic SPF flatenner, that shrinks your SPF record to a single include statement, negating redundant and nested IP addresses. We also run periodical checks to monitor changes made by your service providers to their respective IP addresses, ensuring that your SPF record is always up-to-date.

PowerDMARC assembles a range of email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MTA-STS, TLS-RPT and BIMI to give your domain a reputation and deliverability boost. Sign up today to get your free DMARC analyzer.

implement dmarc

March 30, 2021/by Ahona Rudra
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