ariyarathi

[ariyarathi]

4 Methods to prevent BEC Attacks

Emails have become one of the most popular forms of commercial communication. They are used for business in almost every industry, from retail to IT, music to agricultural, real estate to construction. The bad news is that emails are a primary source of cybercrime, such as corporate email compromise (BEC) assaults.

BEC is a prevalent problem for both small and large enterprises, costing them billions of dollars over time. So, what exactly are BEC scams? And how can you thwart opportunistic cybercriminals?

What exactly is Business Email Compromise?

BEC (also known as a man-in-the-email attack) is a scam in which a cybercriminal gains access to a business email account and impersonates the owner in order to get key business information or swindle the firm and its partners, workers, and customers.

BEC assaults are difficult to detect since the emails lack some of the characteristics of other forms of phishing attempts. For example, in many situations, BEC assaults lack harmful URLs or attachments, making it difficult for typical security measures such as spam link checkers to identify them. They are, nevertheless, not difficult to plan for and avoid.

Methods to Stop BEC Attacks in their Tracks

The most effective strategy to battle email fraud is to avoid them in the first place. To defend yourself from BEC assaults, use these measures and best practices.

1. Configure two-factor or multi-factor authentication for all company email accounts.

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) are cybersecurity solutions that provide an additional layer of security to passwords. This makes it more difficult for attackers to compromise email accounts and use them to launch BEC assaults.

MFA needs attackers to have something else (such as an authentication app, key, or phone) in order to access your email. Allow MFA for high-risk personnel, such as payroll clerks, C-level executives, and administrators.

Two-factor authentication can also include calling trusted numbers to validate urgent demands before transferring payments to a known vendor.

2. Employees should be trained to recognize BEC attacks.

Employees are an organization's most important asset, but they are also its weakest link in terms of cybersecurity. Training staff on how to identify phishing emails and respond to questionable communications is a vital step in defending your firm from BEC assaults.

3. Establish Strict Wire Transfer Procedures.

Your organization should constantly be on the lookout for wire transfer requests, particularly those that must be processed fast or without sufficient verification.

Examine the email seeking a money transfer to ensure its validity before replying to a wire transfer request. Ideally, wire money transfer requests should always be confirmed by a method other than email. Requests can be verified in person or by phone call to previously known numbers (not one in the email).

For financial transactions, transactional parties should be aware of and follow explicitly stated authorization procedures. When a vendor discloses new financial information, your organization, for example, should have additional verification procedures in place.

4. Use DMARC protection.

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) is a popular Email Security Solutions that is well-known for its spam-filtering capabilities. DMARC helps detect and prevent threats from a variety of email frauds, including BEC assaults.

Businesses have increased their digitization in recent years, with employers transferring their employees to remote working, eliminating paper printouts, and increasing their usage of emails. However, the more organizations rely on email, the more probable cybercrime, such as BEC assaults, will flourish.

BEC assaults are a highly successful means of tricking victims into providing money or sensitive information. These frauds pose a severe threat to organizations, and they must be addressed. BEC attacks may be avoided by educating your staff, validating wire transactions, and enabling multi-factor authentication.

EmailAuth provides full email security solutions for all your domains and services. Email Authentication has paved the way for secure email communication over the last few years, and EmailAuth has been pivotal in ushering in the new changes. Try EmailAuth today at emailauth.io.

[ariyarathi]

The Importance of Network Security in Defending Against Email Threats

Organizations continue to benefit from enhanced mobility, agility, productivity, and creativity as a result of technological advancements. However, as vital and valuable as technology is to enterprises worldwide, it also raises security problems.

As a result, maintaining network security should be a major concern not just for enterprises, but also for their stakeholders and the IT experts in charge of assuring digital infrastructure and data protection. Three must-knows for IT administrators to safeguard networks against email attacks are provided below.

Create secure systems

Use an up-to-date spam filter and antivirus software.

Deploy email authentication

Email security concerns continue to be one of the most serious challenges enterprises face all over the world. In fact, according to a PhishMe survey, more than 90% of hacking attempts nowadays started with an email security breach or an email phishing or spear-phishing attack. You just have to read the news to recognize that enterprises are being targeted by Email Security Solutions concerns on a regular basis and that these sorts of assaults are becoming more common.

Creating Secure Systems 

Limiting access to your organization's infrastructure reduces your organization's vulnerability to hackers and other cybercriminals. You might begin by reducing potential soft points. This involves removing extraneous hardware and software access and restricting user privileges to the necessary infrastructure and programs. Additionally, utilize distinct email addresses, login credentials, and domain names for each user and workgroup.

Updated Antivirus Systems    

Whether you are currently working from home due to the pandemic or on an office network, it is critical that your devices have sufficient scanning capacity. It is critical that all software is kept up to date. This involves performing frequent security upgrades and downloading the most recent patches to protect against new infections and new variants of existing threats.

Email authentication  

Using domain-based message authentication, reporting, and compliance, you can protect your emails against spoofing, phishing schemes, and other crimes. DMARC ensures that emails are being sent from the proper domain. Despite this significant value, research shows that just 39% of the Global 2000 firms adopt DMARC.

There is no better time than the present to become proactive and rigorous in preventing email compromise and associated assaults. 

EmailAuth is intended to detect and prevent email fraud by providing security that goes beyond a simple spam filter or acting as a specialized add-on to any spam filter currently in place to strengthen protection against malware, ransomware, and other corporate threats. Try EmailAuth today!

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[ariyarathi]

Email Security Protocols Demystified: The 7 Most Common Protocols

The mechanisms that secure your email from outside influence are known as email security procedures. There is a very good reason why your email requires additional security safeguards. There is no built-in security in the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). Isn't that shocking?

SMTP is compatible with a wide range of security protocols. Here's an explanation of those critical 7  processes and how they secure your emails.

SSL/TLS Encrypts Emails

The most prevalent email security methods that safeguard your email as it travels across the internet are Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and its successor, Transport Layer Security (TLS).

Application layer protocols such as SSL and TLS are used. The application layer standardizes communications for end-user services in internet communication networks. In this scenario, the application layer offers a security framework (a collection of rules) that works in tandem with SMTP (another application layer protocol) to secure email transmission.

TLS adds greater privacy and security to computer program communications. TLS offers security for SMTP in this case. When your email client transmits or receives a message, it initiates a "handshake" with the email server using the Transmission Control Protocolṁ.

Digital Certificates

A digital certificate is an encryption tool that may be used to cryptographically secure an email. Public-key encryption is used using digital certificates.

(Are you concerned about public-key encryption? Sections 6 and 7 cover the most important encryption terminology that everyone should be familiar with and comprehend. It will make the remainder of this post clearer!)

The certificate enables others to send you encrypted emails using a predetermined public encryption key, as well as encrypts your incoming email for others. Your Digital Certificate, then, functions similarly to a passport in that it is linked to your online identity and serves primarily to authenticate that identification.

When you have a Digital Certificate, your public key is accessible to anyone who wants to send you an encrypted email. They use your public key to encrypt their document, and you use your private key to decode it. Individuals are not the only ones who can use digital certificates. A Digital Certificate may be used to authenticate and validate an online identity for businesses, government organizations, email servers, and nearly any other digital entity.

Domain Spoofing Protection with Sender Policy Framework

The Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an authentication system that guards against domain spoofing. SPF adds extra security checks that allow a mail server to detect whether a message came from the domain or whether someone is using the domain to hide their actual identity. A domain is a section of the internet that has a single name. A domain is something like "makeuseof.com."

Because a domain may be identified by location and owner, or at the very least, banned, hackers and spammers frequently hide their domain while attempting to penetrate a system or swindle a user. They increase the chances of an unwary user clicking through or opening a malicious attachment by masquerading a malicious email as a genuine operational domain.

The Sender Policy Framework consists of three main components: the framework itself, an authentication technique, and a particular email header that conveys the information.

DKIM's Role in Email Security

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is an anti-tampering technology that protects the security of your email while it is in transit. DKIM employs digital signatures to verify that an email was sent from a given domain. It also checks to see if the domain approved the email that is to be sent. It is, in that sense, an extension of SPF.

In reality, DKIM facilitates the creation of domain blacklists and whitelists.

DMARC

Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) is the last key in the email security protocol lock. Dmarc system that checks the SPF and DKIM standards in order to protect a domain from fraudulent activity. DMARC is an important tool in the fight against domain spoofing. However, because of the low adoption rates, spoofing is still prevalent.

DMARC operates by preventing the "header from" address from being spoofed. It accomplishes this in the following way:

The "header from" domain name is matched with the "envelope from" domain name. During the SPF verification, the "envelope from" domain is defined.

The "header from" domain name is matched with the "d= domain name" contained in the DKIM signature.

DMARC instructs an email service provider on how to handle incoming emails. If the SPF check and/or DKIM authentication fail, the email is rejected. DMARC is a strategy for preventing spoofing of domain names of all sizes.

End-to-End Encryption with S/MIME

Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) is a well-known end-to-end encryption mechanism. S/MIME encrypts your email message before it is transmitted, but not the sender, receiver, or any email header information. Your communication can only be decrypted by the receiver.

S/MIME is supported by your email client; however, it necessitates the use of a Digital Certificate. Most current email clients support S/MIME and you should double-check support for your selected program and email provider.

PGP/OpenPGP

Another long-standing end-to-end encryption technology is Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). However, its open-source cousin, OpenPGP, is more likely to be encountered and used by most users.

OpenPGP is the PGP encryption protocol's open-source implementation. It is often updated, and you may find it in a variety of current programs and services. A third party, like S/MIME, can still access email metadata, such as sender and recipient information.

Email Security Solutions standards are critical since they increase the security of your emails. Your emails are vulnerable on their own. SMTP has no built-in security, therefore sending an email in plain text (i.e., without any protection and readable by anybody who intercepts it) is dangerous, especially if it contains sensitive information.

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[ariyarathi]

What is the significance of using a DMARC record checker? What are the advantages of employing a DMARC record checker?

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) is an e-mail validation system designed specifically to defend a company's email domain. Failure to use the DMARC record checker can lead to email spoofing, phishing schemes, and other types of cybercrime. DMARC employs cutting-edge email authentication mechanisms such as SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail).

Using a DMARC record checker allows company owners to learn more about who is sending emails on their behalf. The information gathered may then be utilized to efficiently manage the many critical business emails. The DMARC record checker is intended to protect domains from misuse in phishing or unexpected spoofing assaults, which may result in a variety of unwanted difficulties and reputation loss.

Because all companies these days are conducted online, it is critical that the email you send to your visitors, customers, or business clients may only be seen or read by them. Using DMARC to protect your e-mail allows email recipients to verify the legitimacy of communications and have a positive user experience.

What is DMARC and why is it important?

There are already over 5 billion email accounts around the globe, making it simpler for cybercriminals to utilize them for harmful purposes. Despite several security organizations' efforts, criminality over this channel is rising with each passing year. This is where the DMARC requirement comes into play.

DMARC not only provides comprehensive visibility into email activities but also detects all kinds of email phishing assaults. DMARCcan reduce the impact of phishing and malware attacks, reduce spoofing, protect against brand abuse, and avoid scams, among other things.

Where does a DMARC record checker come in handy?

At the moment, harmful emails sent on their behalf are causing harm to all organizations and enterprises. The use of aDMARC record checker toolaids in the prevention of unwanted and unexpected cyberattacks such as spamming and phishing. Businesses may use DMARC to get insight into their email channel and, as a result, establish DMARC policies.

Businesses may simply gain a thorough understanding of their email channel and detect phishing attacks by using the DMARC record checker. Customers can be warned about potential threats in advance in this manner.

How is the DMARC record check implemented?

A genuine DMARC record must be published in order to deploy DMARC. We provide a free tool called DMARC Record Analyzer at EmailAuth that shows the DMARC record, tests it, and certifies its legality. The DMARC Record Checker tool is free and simple to use. To perform the DMARC check, simply input the domain name and click on Look Up to check your domain’s DMARC status.

The DMARC Record Check is a free and handy too that considers every feasible alternative. Furthermore, the DMARC Record Checker will check to see whether any foreign domains are being utilized. Contact us today to know more about DMARC and DMARC Record Checker. Start with a FREE trial to get comprehensive insights into your email channels.

[ariyarathi]

Email Security Protocols Demystified: The 7 Most Common Protocols

The mechanisms that secure your email from outside influence are known as email security procedures. There is a very good reason why your email requires additional security safeguards. There is no built-in security in the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). Isn't that shocking?

SMTP is compatible with a wide range of security protocols. Here's an explanation of those critical 7  processes and how they secure your emails.

SSL/TLS Encrypts Emails

The most prevalent email security methods that safeguard your email as it travels across the internet are Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and its successor, Transport Layer Security (TLS).

Application layer protocols such as SSL and TLS are used. The application layer standardizes communications for end-user services in internet communication networks. In this scenario, the application layer offers a security framework (a collection of rules) that works in tandem with SMTP (another application layer protocol) to secure email transmission.

TLS adds greater privacy and security to computer program communications. TLS offers security for SMTP in this case. When your email client transmits or receives a message, it initiates a "handshake" with the email server using the Transmission Control Protocol.

Digital Certificates

A digital certificate is an encryption tool that may be used to cryptographically secure an email. Public-key encryption is used using digital certificates.

(Are you concerned about public-key encryption? Sections 6 and 7 cover the most important encryption terminology that everyone should be familiar with and comprehend. It will make the remainder of this post clearer!)

The certificate enables others to send you encrypted emails using a predetermined public encryption key, as well as encrypts your incoming email for others. Your Digital Certificate, then, functions similarly to a passport in that it is linked to your online identity and serves primarily to authenticate that identification.

When you have a Digital Certificate, your public key is accessible to anyone who wants to send you an encrypted email. They use your public key to encrypt their document, and you use your private key to decode it. Individuals are not the only ones who can use digital certificates. A Digital Certificate may be used to authenticate and validate an online identity for businesses, government organizations, email servers, and nearly any other digital entity.

Domain Spoofing Protection with Sender Policy Framework

The Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an authentication system that guards against domain spoofing. SPF adds extra security checks that allow a mail server to detect whether a message came from the domain or whether someone is using the domain to hide their actual identity. A domain is a section of the internet that has a single name. A domain is something like "makeuseof.com."

Because a domain may be identified by location and owner, or at the very least, banned, hackers and spammers frequently hide their domain while attempting to penetrate a system or swindle a user. They increase the chances of an unwary user clicking through or opening a malicious attachment by masquerading a malicious email as a genuine operational domain.

The Sender Policy Framework consists of three main components: the framework itself, an authentication technique, and a particular email header that conveys the information.

DKIM's Role in Email Security

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is an anti-tampering technology that protects the security of your email while it is in transit. DKIM employs digital signatures to verify that an email was sent from a given domain. It also checks to see if the domain approved the email that is to be sent. It is, in that sense, an extension of SPF.

In reality, DKIM facilitates the creation of domain blacklists and whitelists.

DMARC

Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) is the last key in the email security protocol lock. DMARC is an authentication system that checks the SPF and DKIM standards in order to protect a domain from fraudulent activity. DMARC is an important tool in the fight against domain spoofing. However, because of the low adoption rates, spoofing is still prevalent.

DMARC operates by preventing the "header from" address from being spoofed. It accomplishes this in the following way:

The "header from" domain name is matched with the "envelope from" domain name. During the SPF verification, the "envelope from" domain is defined.

The "header from" domain name is matched with the "d= domain name" contained in the DKIM signature.

DMARC instructs an email service provider on how to handle incoming emails. If the SPF check and/or DKIM authentication fail, the email is rejected. DMARC is a strategy for preventing spoofing of domain names of all sizes.

End-to-End Encryption with S/MIME

Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) is a well-known end-to-end encryption mechanism. S/MIME encrypts your email message before it is transmitted, but not the sender, receiver, or any email header information. Your communication can only be decrypted by the receiver.

S/MIME is supported by your email client; however, it necessitates the use of a Digital Certificate. Most current email clients support S/MIME and you should double-check support for your selected program and email service provider .

PGP/OpenPGP

Another long-standing end-to-end encryption technology is Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). However, its open-source cousin, Open PGP, is more likely to be encountered and used by most users.

Open PGP is the PGP encryption protocol's open-source implementation. It is often updated, and you may find it in a variety of current programs and services. A third party, like S/MIME, can still access email metadata, such as sender and recipient information.

Email security standards are critical since they increase the security of your emails. Your emails are vulnerable on their own. SMTP has no built-in security, therefore sending an email in plain text (i.e., without any protection and readable by anybody who intercepts it) is dangerous, especially if it contains sensitive information.

[ariyarathi]

Email authentication: How to understand DMARC in less than 10 minutes

DMARC is a protocol that allows you to set up a policy for how your domain handles email sent from other domains. If you’re reading a blog about DMARC, you likely have a good understanding on the importance of both SPF and DKIM. If not, read those blogs first and come back here.

In this blog post, we’ll cover what DMARC is and why it’s important to your email strategy. We’ll also go over some of the most common mistakes that companies make when setting up DMARC policies for their domains and how to avoid these mistakes. Email authentication is a little like studying for a test. You can get by with just cramming for the exam, but you’ll be better off if you learn the concepts and then use them to solve more complex problems.

We often see senders implement DMARC without fully understanding what it does, which in turn results in delivery issues. Those issues can be resolved, but it’s much better to be proactive than reactive with email.

This blog describes what DMARC is, what you need to know before you implement it, and how to maintain your record both short- and long-term.

What is DMARC?

Domain-based message authentication, reporting, and conformance (DMARC) is a check on your email authentication (DKIM and SPF). It helps you to ensure that legitimate email goes to the inbox and spoofed email doesn’t.

DMARC is an anti-phishing technology designed to protect brands from impersonation attacks by verifying their identity in emails. If a company has a DMARC record, it means they want to help protect their users from phishing scams. DMARC, or Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance, is a technology designed to help prevent spam and phishing. Under this system, senders can instruct email providers to verify that only emails coming from specific servers have the right to use their domain name.

How does it work?

DMARC is a tool for email providers, who receive email on behalf of users, to help prevent spoofing. DMARC records tell the recipient's mail servers how to handle messages that do not pass SPF or DKIM checks.

If your domain uses DMARC to pass, a spammer that attempts to send an email pretending to be from your organization will be unable to fake the email authentication signals that make DMARC work. This allows you to block messages that have these fake signatures, or even stop all messages from the spoofed domain.

Then what happens?

Protecting your business and brand with DMARC is easy. See how to create a DMARC record and what to do next.

Monitor: The early stage where mailbox providers can ensure that the right mail is getting through and being authenticated properly without anything happening to unauthenticated mail. In nearly all cases, a new sender to DMARC begins here.

Quarantine: Following monitoring, the messages that fail DMARC move to the spam folder.

Reject: In the final stage and what established DMARC users maintain, the messages that fail DMARC aren’t delivered at all.

You can start slowly, putting only a percentage of your emails through the policy. Mailbox providers will report back, helping senders understand what’s failing, what’s not, and the reasons behind it, giving them the intel they need to make the proper corrections and to help with the decision on when to move to the next stage.

To implement DMARC, create a TXT record in your DNS. You will need to choose a domain or subdomain (such as example.com, example.net, or example.org) and create the record on that name. EmailAuth free DMARC record creation tool creates the necessary configuration for you automatically.

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[ariyarathi]

If DMARC is so great, why isn’t everyone doing it?

Almost 90% of email attacks are based on fake sender identities, either of brands (83%) or individuals (6%), according to recent research. One type of impersonation — what is known as exact-domain impersonation — occurs when scammers use a domain in the “From” field of the message that is actually owned by the organization they’re impersonating. But this type of impersonation can be stopped by email authentication.

Email authentication- Verifying that an email really does come from the domain it says it comes from (aka email authentication) is based on widely accepted standards. Over 80% of email inboxes worldwide will do authentication checks to validate that the sender is allowed to use the domain in the “From” field. It’s just technically difficult for domain owners to get this setup correctly.

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) is a cornerstone anti-phishing technology that prevents unauthorized use of a domain in the “From” address of email messages. This messaging standard works in conjunction with SPF to prevent spam email and other spoofing attempts by maintaining sender authentication and blocking fraudulent messages before they reach inboxes. Email authentication, also known as "authentication" or "validation," is currently supported by Gmail, AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo mailboxes. In fact, more than 5 billion consumer mailboxes worldwide (and 100% of major U.S. consumer mailboxes) respect the DMARC standard.

What makes it so difficult to implement DMARC?

The details of implementing DMARC are not widely understood. It contains some subtleties that many messaging pros are not familiar with. What’s more, it relies on other standards that are themselves tricky to implement and error-prone. Emails sent from DMARC-compliant mail servers will start to be received in non-compliant mail servers beginning this summer and through the rest of 2014 as mail systems upgrade their software to support it. It’s not just small companies that have trouble implementing DMARC correctly. Even large organizations have run into trouble.

The result is forgoing all of the benefits a DMARC implementation can deliver, including protection from spam and phishing attacks, preservation of brand reputation and increased sender credibility. Anyone who has gone to the effort of implementing DMARC, but not configured it to actually enforce authentication, should ask themselves why. For this article, I asked all the Chinese companies I could think of that implemented DMARC, but had not enabled it for protection about their configuration and why they did it this way.

That it tried DMARC filtering in the past; however, mail service providers (MSPS) like Yahoo or Hotmail would often disable authentication when they saw p=none. This made it impossible to block phishing scams. DMARC can be a real challenge to implement, especially when you consider the needs of your business and your customers. For example, say that you’re using SPF for authentication for “From:” addresses but DKIM for authenticated “Subject:” addresses. What if SPF successfully authenticates an email that comes from the Internet, but then DKIM fails to authenticate? That means that the message will fail DMARC authentication, even though the message itself was never compromised. What makes it so difficult to implement DMARC? Many companies are reluctant to move DMARC to an enforcement policy (p=reject or p=quarantine) because they have significant SPF configuration issues that they must first resolve. If you move to DMARC enforcement but still have SPF problems, you run the risk of blocking “good” email by accident.

The SPF lookup limit creates problems for authentication

SPF lookup is used to validate an email message's sender. This article shows how the SPF lookup limit creates technical problems that could lead to a denial of service attack during SPF authentication. This is often seen as a simple and easy solution to sending mail on behalf of another entity through your own servers. With SPF, you can avoid the problems associated with sending third-party mail by publishing an SPF record that authorizes only specific senders. This helps prevent your domain from being forged by unauthorized senders while allowing it to be used as needed.

If you send email from one domain, and your mail server operates on a different domain, you have to turn on Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records in the DNS. But SPF lookup is not perfect. It can’t tell whether an email was sent by a person who was permitted to act on behalf of another domain. And even when SPF lookup succeeds, there are ways it can fail if the name of your mail server changes or if one of your IP addresses is blocked.

[ariyarathi]

OpenSea experienced a cyberattack on NFTs, lost $1.7 million

Cyber attackers have stolen NFTs (Non-fungible Tokens) worth $1.7 million from the 17 members of the OpenSea NFT marketplace. This news spread panic among users as they noticed that their NFTs were missing from OpenSea. Research suggests that a total of 254 tokens were stolen in this attack.

OpenSea initially announced that a total of 32 users were affected by this cyberattack. But later, it was declared that only 17 users among them were affected. The other 15 users came into contact with the attacker, but no loss was recorded.

Anything that can be converted into a digital asset and traded using cryptocurrency can be classified as an NFT. It can be your drawing, photos, videos, GIFs, etc. In 2021, NFT sales increased by $25 billion due to its tremendous increase in popularity.

The NFTs generally work on blockchains as it provides owners the complete ownership of the digital asset. So, when we list our NFT on a marketplace, we have to pay a transaction fee for the usage of blockchain.

With the growth in the investment in NFTs, OpenSea has become one of the leading companies in the world. In January 2022, the company was valued at $13.3 billion. It provides a user-friendly interface that is extremely easy to use. Users can list, browse, and bid on the tokens without any interaction with blockchains.

OpenSea had recently launched a new smart contract. A cyber attacker copied their launch email and re-sent it to users. The unlucky individuals who opened this email were taken to a fake website. On this website, the information of their NFTs was stolen and then migrated from the old contract to the new contract of NFTs.

The company has been struggling with various cyberattacks that were carried out to steal information from their databases. The value of the NFTs is growing exponentially as this attack cost the victims around $1.7 million with only 17 victims. It is still not clear who initiated the attack, but OpenSea has said that they are investigating the matter.

Many blockchain companies are encouraged these days to invest in third-party smart contract auditing as well as bugs bounty programs. Immense importance should be given to educating investors about the potential market risks. These methods help in the prevention of phishing, impersonation, spoofing, and other social engineering attacks. Many people still store their NFTs in online wallets, which makes it even more important for users to know all the red flags of phishing attacks.

Original Source : https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/opensea-experienced-cyberattack-nfts-lost-17-million-aariya-rathi/

[ariyarathi]

What Is DMARC Email Security and How Do You Implement It?

If you’re like most small business owners and executives, email is valuable on every level; it’s a vital tool for communication, customer service and marketing. However, as cyber attackers have become more adept at phishing scams and other means of accessing corporate email accounts, the need to implement forward-looking security measures has never been clearer. Using email security measures to combat cyberattacks is more important than ever, and DMARC should be implemented as part of any organization’s business email security protocol.

Here’s an overview of how DMARC works and what it does. Email servers are regularly targeted by cyber-criminals, especially because they are relatively vulnerable to various attacks compared to other systems. With DMARC email security, you can protect your customers against business email compromise (BEC), an increasingly popular form of hacking that relies on spoofing to fool the people that you're sending emails to. DMARC also helps to ensure that mailing lists are valid and authentic. While implementing DMARC is a complex process, it's a good idea for MSPs to know about it, which is why we've written about it in this article.

What Is DMARC?

DMARC is an email validation system designed to protect business email domains from being exploited via email spoofing, phishing scams, and other cybercrimes. DMARC leverages two existing email authentication techniques—Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). Put in place as a receiving mail server policy for your domain, it allows you to specify which specific senders are authorized to use your domain when sending you messages.

DMARC helps the owner of a domain check who’s sending email on behalf of their domain. The DNS record (the SPF, DKIM and DMARC records) you set up can be used to automatically accept emails when they're sent from someone you trust, or block emails that were received from someone you don't trust. You are not the only one to have noticed that your domain has a tendency to get targeted by phishers. But before you give up on managing your email reputation, check out this guide and find out how DMARC can be used to safeguard your domains against email spoofing and phishing attacks.

Why Is DMARC an important part of email security?

As all professionals will surely agree, it’s crucial that the emails your customers and website visitors believe to be sent by you are legitimate, which is why DMARC email security is such an important part of a strong MSP email security solution. At an average of 340 billion emails sent and received each day, there are options for just about any type of message users are looking to send. To highlight one popular version, email overall has doubled in size in the last decade, which means it’s time to modernize how advertisers and marketers reach recipients.

The simple truth is that it’s a crowded communication channel with endless open waves. With so many messages being transmitted daily, it’s a prime target for attackers. According to an IBM study, it takes an average of 101 days for employees to report a phishing email after the first time they encounter one. While spam filters mitigated over 94% of phishing emails in 2014 and almost 97% in 2015, the sheer volume of emails being sent limits the effect that these systems can have.

How do you implement DMARC?

The process of implementing Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) is fairly simple, especially if you work with a DNS server administrator. Your DNS server administrator add your DMARC record to your DNS so you can begin monitoring traffic associated with your chosen domain. You will start receiving reports, which give you insight into where email traffic using that domain is coming from. In doing so, you might identify some vendors, platforms, or partners that didn’t realize were sending email on your behalf.

[ariyarathi]

How to Protect Citizens from Cybercrime

On October 16, 2017, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 18-01 that mandates the implementation of specific security standards to strengthen email and website security among government agencies. Citizens rely on their email for everything from paying bills to receiving medical records, so protecting email from cybercriminals is critical.

In 2015, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) mandated that all federal agencies that operate .gov email domains implement a DMARC “monitor” policy within 90 days and a DMARC enforcement policy of “reject” within 1 year. With that mandate approaching, and after engagements with Federal agencies, DHS has decided that the private sector can play a more active role to protect citizens and will partner with industry organizations to improve email protection overall.

Federal agencies that don't use online security practices like DMARC enable cyber criminals to access sensitive personal data and put citizens at risk. Jeanette manfra, DHS Assistant Secretary of Cybersecurity and Communications, recently asked federal agencies to adopt technologies like DMARC in order to protect citizens and maintain their trust.

    “It’s really up to agencies and the federal government to say, ‘I care that you are going to trust emails from the federal government…’”

Email is easy to use and inexpensive, but it’s vulnerable. That’s because anyone can send email using someone else’s identity. And unlike essential communications infrastructure like telephones, there are minimal accreditation requirements for using the global email network. This lack of security has had serious consequences for everyone from citizens and businesses to law enforcement and national security officials.

Cybercriminals have found a way to use almost any brand, for just about any purpose, to attack your customers. Criminals use the instant trustworthiness of a well-known company against us to infiltrate our home networks. They can hide malware in fake emails, make them look like they’re coming from a real source and prevent spam filters from blocking them. The Department of Homeland Security measure the adoption of the DMARC email security standard by two categories: large federal agencies (those employing 250 or more employees) and smaller federal agencies. As of November 2017, only 32% of federal agency domains had published a DMARC policy to comply with the DHS mandate.

WHAT IS DMARC?

DMARC.org [Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance] is an open email standard published in 2012 by the industry consortium DMARC.org to protect the email channel. Through DMARC, email senders can request reports about attempted mail-forgery for a given domain, allowing email receivers to evaluate mail streams for patterns of spoofed email that could be indicative of phishing or other malicious acts. DMARC is the only way for email senders to tell email receivers that emails they are sending are truly from them.

DMARC enables agencies that send email using .gov domains to:

Authenticate all legitimate email messages for their email-sending domains, including messages sent from their own infrastructure as well as those sent by authorized 3rd parties

Publish an explicit policy that gives mailbox providers a clear path on how to handle email messages that cannot be proven authentic. These messages can either be sent to a junk folder or rejected outright, protecting unsuspecting recipients from exposure to attacks

Gain intelligence on their email streams by letting them know who is sending mail from their domains. This data helps companies to not only identify threats against their customers, but to also discover legitimate senders that they may not even be aware of

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) is an email authentication, policy, and reporting mechanism that builds on existing technologies such as SPF and DKIM in order to improve their effectiveness and interoperability. By adopting DMARC in a coordinated way, both individual organizations and now entire industries can fight back against phishing attacks. You can use DMARC to create a record verifying that your domain sends email using only legitimate domains and uses the latest anti-spoofing technologies available.

Furthermore, you can choose to tell receiving mail servers how each message should be handled if a domain in the message header fails authentication; this is called a DMARC policy. The simplest policy is “none,” which lets all messages pass through unaltered. You can also set “quarantine” to mark suspicious messages so they land in the recipient’s spam folder. And if you select the strongest policy, “reject,” messages will not be delivered, with an error instead.

Source : https://medium.com/@aariyagoel5621/how-to-protect-citizens-from-cybercrime-d4f1498a8142

[ariyarathi]

How DMARC may also help stop malicious e mail assaults.

Despite being on the market place for over two years, just shy of half (47%) of all enterprise firms presently use Domain Owner Authorization Framework (DMARC), according to a recent report. But an even smaller percentage are using it properly. As a result, enterprise companies are easy targets for phishing attacks that leverage e mail accounts and e mail compromises (BECs) for large-scale fraud or espionage purposes. Determined by a January FBI report, email frauds and scams have reached a record high, with enterprise email breaches (BECs and EACs) surpassing ransomware assaults in their cost to organizations. DMARC, quick for Area-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance, is an e mail protection strategy that assists corporations guard themselves towards precise threats by elevating transactions around electronic mail. A web based provider, the main supplier of lawful organization DMARC deployment instruments.

10 years in the past, DMARC (Domain Name Mapping Authentication Record) was launched to safe email communications. It’s a proven solution that leverages DNS and SPF and, when correctly deployed, can stop phishing from occurring and reduce spam costs. While it may sound good, new research suggests that simply because DMARC is complicated to put in and not each area on this planet has adopted it, it’s now much more pressing companies must watch over their e mail safety than within the previous.

Though it sounds nice on paper, not all groups have adopted DMARC. In case you’re questioning to yourself, “What’s DMARC?”, you’re not alone. learn additional right here to find out whether or not or now not implementing it is worthwhile for your group. Every ninety seconds there's a data breach, $2 billion stolen or lost, a business disrupted or even bankrupted, and someone fired for not doing enough to stop e mail fraud. The stakes are too excessive.

This guide walks you thru the newest threats and techniques using detailed examples, references, and examples. It explains why best techniques are essential, the value of automated tools, the pitfalls of manual approaches, and how to overcome them all. The case for DMARC explains how e mail diversion is the main technique for e mail poisoning, and suggests that using DMARC to safeguard from diversion may well put a damper on this fraud.

It's now taken upon on my part to assist such people as a way of thanking for his or her genius as well as their superior contributions. The global incidence of BEC/EAC is growing. Unfortunately, so too are all these threats. Only by using tools, data and tactics previously applied to the recovery from other sorts of attack can firm’s use becoming aware of these attacks and responding properly to them. Attackers using BEC will make use of human fallibility.

They use a range of impersonation tactics, including domain spoofing, lookalike domains and display name spoofing attack. These tactics are successful because of the complexities involved in addressing domain abuse. Stopping domain spoofing requires specialized tools and identifying lookalike domains takes even more expertise.

DMARC adoption at the moment

DMARC, or Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance, sends important safety tips to recipients who receive mail from unauthenticated domains. This e-mail authentication system helps stop spoofing and phishing scams. Thousands of sending domains are already implementing DMARC, protecting themselves and their staff and consumers. You should definitely implement DMARC in your small business as soon as possible to reduce your risk!

Take the DMARC journey

Email fraud has become a 360-degree problem, as criminals can leverage a variety of identity deception techniques to target the different stakeholders involved with an organization. DMARC is the one accepted technique to stop BEC scams and other domains frauds. Resolve whether or not you’re prepared so as to add extra instruments, expertise, or different organizational modifications to assist your implementation.

Each of these steps is important for reaching DMARC success. Take them one at a time and you'll be on your way to getting there and knowing that you have the protections in place to ensure that your company, customers, and partners are much better protected from malicious cyberattack. DMARC, as a platform itself and a suite of tools, is technically simple to deploy. Like most implementations, the success of DMARC is dependent upon defining goals, figuring out sources, and creating and executing a plan.

Begin with monitoring to establish a single sender subdomain. Then, use that information to create a phased undertaking plan. As soon as the group identifies legit senders and have mounted authentication points, it might probably transfer to coverage of “reject” and block phishing, enterprise e mail compromise, and different e mail fraud assaults. The Domain Working Group has designed the DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) commonplace in part to help companies pick out tips on how to handle spammers and phishers who attempt to take advantage of their e-mail id.

Source : https://medium.com/@aariyagoel5621/how-dmarc-may-also-help-stop-malicious-e-mail-assaults-df9651ae982a

[ariyarathi]

What cybersecurity threats are we expected to face in 2022?

Ever since the introduction of the internet in our lives, cybersecurity has always been a major priority. The exponential growth in cyberspace in the last two years has provided enormous evidence of the need and requirement of cybersecurity services. Along with the global digital advancement, the number of cyberattacks has also increased. According to experts, the global cost of cybercrimes is going to reach $10.5 trillion by 2025.

Some of the biggest cybersecurity threats in the year 2022 are -

Social engineering: Social engineering is one of the most dangerous hacking methods employed by cyber attackers because it is highly dependent on the errors made by employees and users. The nature of social engineering attacks is highly subjective. The attackers can easily identify the weaknesses of the users and exploit them to further invade the systems.

Configuration mistakes: In 2022 as well, the effect of COVID-19 is going to persist. With this, the careless cyber errors made by employees at work are also going to increase. This is due to the minimal cyber awareness among the employees who now have to work in a digital environment. These mistakes create the backdrop for future cyberattacks.

Growth in Ransomware attacks: The number of ransomware attacks has increased manifolds in recent years. With the increased advancement in technology, ransomware attacks have become much more sophisticated and advanced. Further, with the growth of Ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) providers, small-time hackers can also execute attacks against businesses. With this, no business is spared. Every business is at risk of experiencing a cyberattack.

Cloud threats: The market for cloud security is growing owing to the shift from office to remote working. Cloud storage and data backup are now the backbones of a majority of businesses and organizations. Further, after the effects of the pandemic wear out, the mass ‘return to office’ drive is going to help increase cyberattacks altogether.

Growth in supply chain attacks: Most large organizations, store their data with third-party vendors for better protection and management. By attacking the supply chain, hackers get access to the data of a range of organizations. Based on research by Forrester, 60% of the cybersecurity attacks executed in the future are going to be against third-party supply chains.

Personalized phishing attacks: Personalized phishing attacks are carried out when the hacker knows the ins and outs of an organization and knows what to do to trick the victim. These attacks are highly case-specific and may or may not work for other organizations.

New 5G risks: With the introduction and growing adoption of 5G in businesses, the Internet of Things adoption is also increasing. Hackers can take advantage of vulnerable devices and infrastructure networks used by employees to exploit the organization.

Poor Data management: To defend against a potential cyberattack, the management of data is very important. We must ensure that all organizational data is stored in proper folders and files for better handling. This reduces the risk of losing any kind of data and reduces confusion as well.

Third-party exposure: Hackers infiltrate the systems of unsuspecting victims by attacking third-party vendors that have some form of weakness associated with their security solutions. Third-party vendors with access to the primary details of the targeted organization are singled out and hacked.

There are many other risks associated with cyberattacks that can cause harm to the civilian population in 2022. We cannot say for sure that the above-mentioned list is final. Here, we must understand that the cyber landscape is rapidly changing due to the ongoing advancement in technology. With such drastic changes, it’s no wonder that cybersecurity threat factors have also evolved.

Original Source : https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-cybersecurity-threats-we-expected-face-2022-aariya-rathi/

[ariyarathi]

DMARC: 5 Keys to Success

DMARC has been around for 4 years and is steadily growing to include the participation of some of the world's largest email senders. From a technical perspective, DMARC is embodied within a single DNS record. This post will cover 5 keys to DMARC success from both an organization and enterprise-wide perspective: Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) is a standard email authentication protocol that plays an essential role in any organization’s cyber security arsenal. With a technical understanding of what it is, why you need it and how you can use it to protect your business, you can help maintain a secure cyber environment and stay one step ahead of today’s constantly evolving threats.

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) is a standard email authentication protocol that plays an essential role in any organization’s cyber security arsenal. With a technical understanding of what it is, why you need it and how you can use it to protect your business, you can help maintain a secure cyber environment and stay one step ahead of today’s constantly evolving threats.

DMARC is the most powerful tool at your disposal for eradicating phishing attacks. And the resilience the policy offers your email security program can be achieved in as little as a few hours: by simply setting up a DMARC record that instructs receiving servers to reject unauthenticated emails purporting to be from your domain.

Learn the five keys to success for deploying a successful, enterprise-wide DMARC program. Whether you’re implementing DMARC for a single domain or just a handful of senders, you can expect challenges that test your technical and business knowledge. Learn from the authors how they overcame these challenges as they rolled out DMARC in their own organization and how you can do it too. Implementing DMARC can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Listen as I share five key tips from my colleague Autumn Tyr-Salvia that we’ve learned from helping some of the world’s largest companies implement successful DMARC programs.

I’ll share five of those hard-won lessons today.

DMARC Program Leadership Best Practices

Getting to “reject” enforcement is not straightforward. It’s a combination of policy, infrastructure, tools and people. This document highlights the key decisions that can help you get there. In the battle to secure customer inboxes, DMARC is clearly winning. However, that does not mean there is nothing stopping phishers from taking control of customer email channels. Instead, the real issue is that deploying DMARC is fundamentally a leadership, process, and communication challenge. Two lessons in particular stand out.

Communication and Visibility are Key to DMARC Success

Lead the Discussion with Business Value, Not Security Hygiene

DMARC Implementation Best Practices

The good news is that there are lessons-learned, and a series of best practices for implementing DMARC that can help you avoid common pitfalls. We’ll explore those together in this article.

Get the Right Scope

Prioritize Your Domains in Stages

Don’t Stop at “p=reject.”

Another Key Lesson: Don’t Go It Alone

The decision to deploy DMARC is an important one. Protect your email domain from Spoofing and Business Email Compromise Phishing. Implement BIMI to put your brand/logo on emails today EmailAuth provides the technical capabilities and workflow management that program leaders need to simplify the complexity of DMARC in the enterprise.

Original Source :

[ariyarathi]

Europe is experiencing huge growth in mobile malware threats

Since the start of February 2022, it has been observed by researchers that there has been a 500% increase in malware infections of mobile phones across Europe. According to experts, the hackers are trying out new methods that affect Android as well as iOS mobile phones equally.

As per the reports, the majority of the malware affects Android mobile phones when compared to iOS devices in a ratio of 6:1. Keeping this in mind, we can understand that the trend of mobile messaging abuse is increasing at good speed. 

The modern-day malware is very capable and doesn't only steal private information but can also record audio and video from the devices, track location, and even wipe out targeted data. Whenever malicious software is installed on a device, it provides all the controls to the hackers and can provide access to the private and sensitive information of the victim.

There are various kinds of malware found in cyberspace, such as -

TeaBot: Initially found in Italy, TeaBot is a type of multifunctional Trojan that can easily steal messages as well as credentials and can also stream the screen of the affected device without much effort. This malware has stolen the credentials of more than 60 European banks. It uses keylogging and can also intercept the Google Authenticator codes.

FluBot: This malware was first reported in Spain and then spread throughout the UK and Germany in 2020. This malware spreads by accessing the contact list of the victim's device and sending this information back to the C&C (command and control) server. It can easily access the internet, read and send messages, make voice calls and read notifications, etc.

TangleBot: This malware spreads mostly through fake package delivery notifications. This malware attack is very rare in nature. It gives notifications to the victim's devices to automatically update the software.

TianySpy: This malware attacks both Android and iOS devices, and impersonates the messages from the victim’s service providers. 

There are many more examples of malware that are quite famous in cyberspace for attacking victims and causing grave financial damage. Mobile malware is spreading at a very high rate with more advanced technology and attack methods. Awareness of the recent events and attacks in the cybersecurity world is very important as it can help mitigate future risks. It is very important to employ antivirus software on your mobile devices with proper authentication passwords for better mitigation results.

Original Source :-https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/europe-experiencing-huge-growth-mobile-malware-threats-aariya-rathi/

[ariyarathi]

Email Authentication - Don't Turn Your Emails into Spam

There is, thankfully, a way to avoid the terrible spam folder black hole. Implementing email authentication allows you to demonstrate to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that your marketing emails are valid and deserve to be delivered to recipients' inboxes.

Email authentication for dummies

Nobody enjoys spam. ISPs are always attempting to limit the number of unsolicited emails in our inboxes. They accomplish this by studying the email's origins and determining if it is from a legitimate sender or a possible spammer. This is when email authentication comes into play.

Email authentication is a collection of mechanisms that the receiving server can employ to ensure that the email received is not forged. The server will verify that it originated from the person displayed in the ‘From’ box as part of this verification. Email authentication can, therefore, help to avoid spoofing and phishing schemes, in which an email looks to be from a valid domain but is really delivered by a hostile third party. The receiving server will also check to see whether the email has changed while in route. This can keep your contacts safe from man-in-the-middle attacks.

There are several approaches to implementing email authentication. Each approach has its own setup process and takes a different approach to authentication. Typically, you'll set up rules for verifying emails received from your domain. Then, for each sending domain, you'll set up your servers and email infrastructure to apply these rules, and then publish them in your Domain Name System (DNS) records.

When authenticating incoming emails, recipient email servers might resort to these rules. If your email looks to be valid, the server will transmit it to the inbox of the recipient. If it fails this check, it may be refused, quarantined, or sent to spam.

Importance and impact

Email authentication has a clear function for the recipient. It aids in the protection of the user from spam, phishing schemes, and other dangerous communications. Third parties can simply modify the source of emails without authentication to avoid spam filters. They may even imitate your distinctive logo in order to mislead your clients into assuming this is real correspondence.

Any assault that impersonates your company poses a significant risk to customer confidence. As a result, email authentication is an essential tool for safeguarding your reputation and maintaining your audience. It enhances the likelihood that your emails will be trusted by the receiving server.

In contrast, if your communications look to come from an unusual or unexpected site, they are likely to end up in spam bins. Poor email delivery rates almost often equate to a low Return On Investment (ROI) from your content marketing. You should see an increase in email conversion rates after installing email authentication.

Read Also: 4 Reasons why Your Emails are getting Bocked by Gmail

Many organizations now send emails using a third-party platform, such as Mailchimp, Constant Contact, or other similar technologies. These systems may be used to construct automated campaigns and segmentation. These platforms may send messages on your behalf from your website's domain by validating your domain and email.

Email authentication methods

Email authentication necessitates coordination and cooperation between the sending and receiving servers. Thankfully, email authentication standards ensure that all email clients and providers communicate in the same language. Let's have a look at the underlying standards before we teach you how to create authentication.

1. DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)

DKIM generates a one-of-a-kind public key that is paired with a private key. This DKIM signature is a header that is appended to the email and encrypted. DKIM can then verify that the email is from an authentic sender. A DKIM signature can also prevent hackers from interfering with an email in transit as part of a man-in-the-middle attack.

2. Sender Policy Framework (SPF)

SPF is an authentication standard that validates your identity as the sender of an email. This policy compares the IP address of the sending email server to a list of IP addresses permitted to send email from that domain. The sender's DNS gets updated with the SPF record.

When a server receives an email, the SPF record is used by your ISP to verify the sender's IP address. The email will be delivered successfully if this value matches the SPF record. If you do not offer SPF authentication, the destination server may reject your communications since they come from an unauthenticated sender address.

3. Domain Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance (DMARC)

Domain Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) is a policy that governs how emails that fail SPF or DKIM authentication are handled. This provides you with greater control over your email authentication system and protects the receiver from phishing and spoofing attempts.

DMARC Solutions For Business allows you to instruct the receiving email server on how to respond when it receives a message that appears to be from your domain but does not meet the SPF or DKIM authentication requirements.

Email marketing is an excellent approach to raising brand recognition and moving contacts through the sales funnel. Your meticulously prepared campaigns, on the other hand, may end up in recipients' spam folders if you don't execute email authentication. Learn more about email authentication and protocols at EmailAuth.

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Source : https://www.newshubfeed.com/technology/email-authentication-dont-turn-your-emails-into-spam

[ariyarathi]

How DMARC can assist in the prevention of malicious email attacks

DMARC is a widely-adopted email security standard that helps prevent malicious email attacks. Used by over 80% of the world's largest brands, it provides stronger protection against rogue email and limits the spread of fraudulent emails. Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) standardizes and backs up reporting on email authentication and content. It offers a simple, flexible, low-cost method for achieving broad interoperability of different email authentication systems and technologies as well as insight into the email sending practices of your own domains. From the moment DMARC was released, organizations wanted to know why they should adopt it. In this session, you'll get an introduction to the concepts behind DMARC and then dive deep into what it is, what it isn't and how it can be used for your specific organization.

The case for DMARC

Email fraud destroys brand reputation and consumer trust while costing organizations billions of dollars, elevating email fraud to a board-level conversation. Low volume, highly targeted business email compromise (BEC) and email account compromise (EAC) scams are the most dangerous—even more costly than ransomware.

The Digital Marketing email ecosystem is under siege. Cyber-criminals have found innovative ways to monetize and maximize their return on investment through email fraud, (BEC) business email compromise and (EAC) email account compromise scams. From a consumer perspective, these fraudulent emails are confusing and craftily designed to manipulate and deceive. Fraudsters steal millions of dollars every year through BEC and EACs.

Read Also: What is Business Email Compromise (BEC)?

This white paper explores how applying DMARC to your organization's email infrastructure can significantly lower exposure to both impersonation and account compromise attacks, and the benefits of the new DMARC policy assertions to aid reporting. Effective BEC strategies require a combination of technical, operational and human processes using a layered approach. DMARC is the most important of these technical layers, blocking all spoofed emails from reaching your customers, employees and partners. Domain spoofing is one of the methods used by attackers to get an email delivered to a user’s inbox instead of their spam folder. It takes specialized expertise to parse email headers and figure out if mail was spoofed. The easy solution is to adopt DMARC, which allows you to use your own domain as a security measure.

DMARC adoption today

DMARC adoption has continued to grow over the last decade. As of December 2020, 23% of sending domains reject unauthenticated mail, while another 11% of sending domains send mail to quarantine, according to Farsight data published on DMARC. While this data represents continued implementation growth, it also means nearly 80% of domains are still not rejecting unauthenticated mail. For the last decade, DMARC has been available as an option for email protection. In the last year, more than a million domains have adopted DMARC.

DMARC hazards

Organizations choosing to navigate the DMARC journey—without outside assistance—using internal resources need not stumble without proper tools. To avoid doing this, there are a few hands-off tools you can use as well as some tips. This research brief will help you get started on a successful DMARC journey. It describes common pitfalls as well as important prerequisite steps. It then presents a six-step checklist to build a data management system and stay on the DMARC journey. Finally, it provides tools and references to help organizations stay on track.

As the security teams decides whether or not to deploy DMARC to protect its trusted domains, there are several potential hazards team members should know about:

· The high risk of blocking legitimate mail.

· DMARC requires extensive expertise.

· How to store, render, and analyze large data sets.

· A process for identifying and contacting stakeholders.

· Ongoing support and management.

Take the DMARC journey

Our experts will discuss the continued threats of email fraud and explain why it is essential to implement and enforce a robust, company-wide email authentication policy. Email fraud has become a 360-degree problem, as criminals can leverage multiple identity deception tactics to target various stakeholders involved with an organization. This tends to include their employees, customers, and business partners, so mitigating these potential hazards should become a high priority. Consider these four steps to kick off your journey:

· Select a domain. Consider a sub domain vs. primary domain to get started.

· Enable monitoring. Set the mail receiver policy to “none.”

· Add the DMARC Record to DNS. Use the organization’s standard DNS addition process.

· Receive and analyze domain reports. Starting with one domain will reduce the noise.

DMARC provides a powerful benefit to a customer’s messaging ecosystem. As with any complex technology, it’s necessary to start small and plan the implementation in phases. The Take the Best DMARC Solutions Journey customer retention plan includes instructions for starting your journey toward a fraud-free messaging ecosystem. Resources are available for defining objectives, identifying resources, creating and executing a plan, putting in place a monitoring strategy, and more. Ensuring that an organization’s email infrastructure is properly configured to reject or quarantine messages based on DMARC policy will reduce the volume of spam and phishing emails received by employees. The email fraud landscape is changing. In order to dramatically reduce the number of fraudulent emails sent to consumers, businesses and government organizations, DMARC provides a critical system for validating that messages are authentic.

Source : https://medium.com/@aariyagoel5621/how-dmarc-can-assist-in-the-prevention-of-malicious-email-attacks-a3510f061232

[ariyarathi]

Tips for a secure email

An email address is essential for most transactions these days, from activating a mobile smartphone, to making online purchases, to setting up an online account. An email address is more than just another method for someone to contact you. A email privacy is an essential part of having your identity stolen. With a secure email, you'll never have to worry about explaining to your bank, or Apple, or the IRS that you didn't make that bogus charge. Your email address may contain sensitive and important communication.

You need to take steps to ensure that your email address is as secure as possible. Tips in this article will help you keep your email address safe, including creating a unique mix of characters and numbers and keeping your account information confidential. Your email address is an important piece of your identity. It's used for everything from getting into your bank account to paying for items online. Accordingly, keeping it secure is important. Here are a few ways you can ensure your email address is as secure as possible.

Choosing an email provider

Email is one of the most popular ways to keep in touch with friends and family. There are several email providers available to you, EmailAuth is the best provider for a secure email offering different levels of service and allowing you to add more email accounts if needed best Email Authentication Service. Check out our online website to choosing the top email provider for your needs. You can access them online via a web browser or set it up so that email is accessed via a mobile email app or computer email program.

Setting up an email address

Email privacy and security starts when you first create the email account.

· Use non-identifying information

· Use a password no one else knows

· Use two-step verification

· Review security notifications

Practicing good email habits

· Use secure devices

· Always log out

· Don’t allow browser or mobile phone to remember your email account or passwords

· Be cautious when giving out your email address

Don’t click on links from unknown or suspicious individuals

Don’t follow shady links from unknown or suspicious individuals. Protect yourself and your information by bookmarking our website and checking back often for all the latest information! If you get a e-mail that appears to be from your bank, or another service provider, and it contains a link requesting any personal information (such as passwords, credit card information, bank information, etc.), don’t click on the link or reply. Instead, find the phone number for the company, and call them back with that information.