Why is DMARC important for Financial Orgs?

Today's economy is humming along, and so is cybercrime against financial institutions. While these attacks can take many different forms, they nearly invariably begin with business email compromise (BEC) attacks, phishing, and other sophisticated email threats. 80% of financial institutions lack the cybersecurity solutions and technology to identify and prevent the increasingly sophisticated BEC attacks against their workers, much alone those aimed at their consumers.

This has had an impact on banks where it matters the most...their bottom line. According to the FBI, between October 2013 and May 2018, BEC assaults caused $12.5 billion in global damages. During the same time period, they assessed that $2.9 billion was stolen from U.S. banks alone. We are all aware of the media firestorm that ensues as a result of these attacks. Given the numerous financial choices accessible to clients today, no institution can afford to overlook these instances.

In response to this issue, major email providers, e-commerce enterprises, and social media networks established the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and ConformanceDomain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) email security standard six years ago to reject phony emails or designate them as spam.

According to the Global Cyber Alliance, the top five banks in the United States have all implemented DMARC. However, just 11 of the country's 50 fastest-growing community banks have done so. Only 9 of Europe's top 50 banks have used the technology. According to dmarcian's phishing scorecard, Canada's 'Big Six' nationally chartered banks do only marginally better, with two completely implementing DMARC, three in the process, and one outlier.

Obstacles to DMARC Implementation

1. Email security is not the responsibility of a single individual or group. Security, fraud protection, marketing, incident response, DNS administrators, third-party suppliers, and others are commonly engaged. It is critical to assign the right people and resources to a DMARC project.

2. Email is a complicated medium. Organizations frequently have separate business divisions that use their own unique email addresses, making it harder to identify authentication difficulties. The ‘monitor’ mode or ‘none’ policy of DMARC allows the email team to make educated policy decisions and identify which messages are authentic and which are not.

3. Know when to implement which policy. Monitoring, rejecting or redirecting emails is a critical choice for any business. The answer is determined by the domain. Every business uses a distinct type of email. Promotional, such as a newsletter; transactional depending on a user's activities, such as signing up for a new banking product; regulatory; and others all require separate treatment. A company's email team must analyze all email domains, prioritize them, and assess the risk and effect of email deliverability on the business.

Why is Email Security Pivotal to Financial Institutions?

Financial institutions (banks, credit unions, brokerage, and insurance firms, advisers) are good targets for phishing since criminals are more interested in where the money is. In the past, phishing assaults were very transparent, with misspellings or illogical facts that instantly revealed the illicit aim. Today, networked cybercrime rings may send very plausible, targeted emails that are essentially indistinguishable from those delivered by a trusted coworker, lender, or banking brand. The assault might take weeks to cultivate confidence in order to obtain important company information from an employee or consumer.

You might be wondering, "Email? We already have malware and antivirus solutions in place. Can it truly pose such a serious threat?" The issue is that today's digital thieves focus on identity theft and take advantage of the pervasiveness of emails, the most common customer contact method. Furthermore, it is simple for anybody—criminal or consumer—to determine if a certain organization is implementing DMARC. Navigate to the EmailAuth website. This is how financial institutions expose themselves to a particular risk.

How Does DMARC help?

DMARC guarantees that valid emails are verified in accordance with established DKIM and SPF standards. Senders can choose to:

-Monitor every email to gain a better understanding of their brand's email environment without interfering with the delivery of messages that fail DMARC.

-Quarantine or send to spam folder emails that fail DMARC.

- Reject and route away from the inbox DMARC-failed emails.

The EmailAuth Edge

We, at EmailAuth, are email authentication specialists who assist financial services firms in defining and implementing effective email security measures such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. In fact, we use these tools to distribute all of our clients' emails. We are approached by enterprises that want the greatest levels of performance—deliverability, uptime, analytics, and scale.

The financial services industry is conservative by nature, especially when it comes to embracing new technologies. The benefits of DMARC—giving visibility into your email and safeguarding your consumers and brand from email fraud—far outweigh the early deployment obstacles and minimal expense. Please contact us to discuss your company's security problems.