Did you know that one email in every 99 is a phishing attack? Or that around 25 percent of these emails usually make their way into inboxes?
And the worst thing is that more than 97 percent of people can’t identify what a spam email looks like. So, many of them fall for socially engineered attacks like phishing, scareware, quid pro quo, and baiting.
Even companies like Google, Facebook, and Target aren’t infallible. That raises the question: how can you protect your business from email phishing and other socially engineered attacks?
This is where DMARC comes in. But what is DMARC, and how does it protect your business from phishing, email hijacking, or scareware? Let’s break it down.
What Is DMARC?
Domain-based Authentication Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) is a technical protocol that handles emails that aren’t authenticated by DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) and the Sender Policy Framework (SPF).
It helps protect email senders and recipients from email phishing, spoofing, and impersonation fraud, which can be the source of data breaches and email compromises. DMARC allows domain owners to specify actions that need to be taken when an email fails DKIM and SPF authentication.
Email receivers can check whether incoming messages have valid DKIM and SPF records and whether they align with the domain of origin. If these messages don’t comply with DKIM and SPF records, they are labeled DMARC-failed.
How Does DMARC Handle Failed Email?
You have the option to handle a DMARC-failed message based on three different DMARC policies, including:
- The Monitor Policy: p=none – It will provide insights into who sent a DMARC-failed email, but it won’t stop the email from reaching your primary inbox.
- The Quarantine Policy: p=quarantine – It will send DMARC-failed emails into the spam folder and DMARC-passed emails into your primary inbox, reducing the harm caused by spam emails.
- The Reject Policy: p=reject – It will stop DMARC-failed emails from reaching your inbox entirely, preventing phishing or spoofing attacks.
4 Ways DMARC Protects Businesses
DMARC aims to protect businesses and users from socially engineered attacks. Here’s how it accomplishes that goal:
- It Increases Domain Visibility
DMARC’s monitoring “p=none” policy reports all email activity, so you can assess all the emails sent from your domain, those you received, which emails were authenticated, those that weren’t authenticated, and for what reasons.
- It Only Allows Certain Domains to Send Emails
If attackers use a trusted domain, they can penetrate your company’s defenses and deceive your employees or customers, often causing irreparable damage to your brand image and decreasing brand trust.
DMARC can prevent that by only allowing authorized IPS to send emails from your domain.
- It Blocks Fraudulent Emails
DMARC’s reject policy allows you to control whether or not suspicious emails are delivered to your email. So, if a specific email doesn’t pass DKIM and SPF records, you can reject it before it causes problems.
It also blocks business email compromise (BEC) scams, which occur when criminals impersonate business employees within a company.
- It Increases Legitimate Email Delivery
As DMARC checks the domains and IPs of every incoming and outgoing email, it ensures that only legitimate emails get delivered to your primary inbox. This prevents phishing, spoofing, and compromise scams.
The Bottom Line
Hackers are always looking for ways to get into your systems and domains. But DMARC can derail their efforts, saving your business time and money.
It prevents your company’s email from being used for phishing, scareware, and other social engineering attacks, makes phishing attacks visible, mitigates the impact of malware and phishing attacks, and protects you from BEC scams.
So, ensure your company’s safety and maintain your customers’ trust by getting a DMARC protocol coded into your domain today.