Last month Marc Laliberte, WatchGuard’s Senior Threat Analyst, contributed an article to Cyber Defense Magazine that reviewed the three major email authentication anti-phishing technology standards: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. In a nutshell, these solutions dramatically cut down on phishing and spam emails by verifying that the sender of a message is actually who they claim to be, and automatically quarantining or rejecting messages if they’re not.
This month, Marc’s back with Part 2 of his Cyber Defense Magazine, where explores why these solutions have not been more widely adopted:
“As it turns out, SPF and DKIM adoption are actually doing quite well with email senders. According to a 2016 report by Google, 95 percent of non-spam emails received by Gmail users came from senders with SPF records, and nearly 88 percent of non-spam emails employed DKIM signing. DMARC, however, is still struggling to take off. A Federal Trade Commission report earlier this year found that only a third of surveyed companies have published DMARC records and less than 10 percent of that group have configured their DMARC records to reject unauthenticated messages.”
Marc points out that while there have been some improvements with DMARC, according to the Online Trust Alliance, rates are still fairly low overall. He outlines what could likely be hampering DMARC adoption and offers readers 3 tips to properly set DMARC policies.
“First, test with a “none” policy. Mailboxes that support DMARC should still send reports on messages that fail DKIM and SPF checking. This can help you identify legitimate email sources from your domain that you may have overlooked. Second, make sure you follow the correct syntax when configuring your DMARC DNS record…”
To read Marc’s complete insights and configuration tips on DMARC, head over to Cyber Defense Magazine for Part 1 and Part 2 of his anti-phishing standards review.
Interested in more phishing news and tips? Check out our recent post about scammers phishing Hurricane Harvey or watch the Daily Security Byte on Punycode Phishing.