BOO! Is your email haunted!?
It’s not breaking news to anyone that your organization needs to have robust cyber security. New risks emerge, the industry adapts, new protocols and standards are adopted. But many organizations, especially startups, may forget about one detail that leaves you open to massive risk. Let’s burn some sage and shine a flashlight on the risks of not properly setting up your domain to prevent spoofing, mitigate phishing, and implementing quarantine policies.
SPF, DKIM, DMARC, Phishing, Smishing, Spoofing. Let’s drop the acronyms and jargon and get to the point. Your domain is your intellectual property, your reputation, and your livelihood. It needs to be protected at all costs, it simply goes without saying. But so many small to medium sized businesses may not have these standards and policies in place. It’s time to fix that.
So what do these things do? Simple. They are the instructions, rules, and authentication that email servers are told to follow when email from your organization is sent across the web. What is an SPF record? It defines what email server is authorized to send your email. DKIM? When someone receives an email, that server checks to see if that email is associated with the proper owner of the domain. This is the main way to prevent someone “spoofing” or “impersonating” your email. What about DMARC? When you receive a suspicious email, this defines what to do with the email. Do you want to receive it? Quarantine it for your IT to review? Or flat out refuse.
Not only that, Microsoft has announced new sets of rules for bulk email senders, requiring these record and policies. A recent comment by Microsoft according to an article on HelpNetSecurity.com stated:
“These Domain Name Service (DNS) email authentication records verify that you are the legitimate sender of your email and prevent spoofing and phishing attacks”
Each of these are critical to mitigating your risk but it is all too frequent someone buys a domain, sets up a quick email account, and a website and set out to build the company of their dreams. But bad actors exist, hackers hack, and scammers scam. Just think, you are interacting with a huge client, and all the sudden they receive an email impersonating you and asking for a credit card. That client isn’t going to accept an apology for being exposed by this type of risk.
Everyone receives spam, most is obvious, too many are extremely clever, and it is never going to stop. You need strict standards and policies in place regardless of your organization’s size. Reactive security is not security. If you’re looking to implement better spam and phishing security into your organization, contact your local experts at ALTAMIT today. Visit ALTAMIT.net to chat live with an online specialist. Or call (888) 377-ALTA, that’s (888) 377-2582 to speak with a specialist now.
