IT decision-makers are fully aware of the recent increase in email phishing assaults. Business Email Compromise, in which firms are duped into paying fraudulent bills, and whaling phishing, in which attackers target high-profile individuals such as CFOs and COOs to acquire sensitive information, are two examples.
Basic security measures such as firewalls and Internet security software are insufficient to protect against email phishing attempts. To improve your security, you must first have a better understanding of your company's email communication. Advanced tools, such as professional email forensics software, are required for this. These apps can assist you in parsing and studying every email that your firm sends and receives in order to identify possible email phishing attacks and reduce harm even if an attack has already occurred. However, before you do so, you should consider installing email security standards such as DMARC, SPF, and DKIM, which are becoming increasingly crucial.
Email Authentication Protocols
DKIM, SPF, and DMARC are security techniques that allow you to authenticate your emails. They also inform mail services, ISPs, and other email receivers that certain third-party entities are actually authorized to send emails on your behalf. When used together, these protocols can serve as powerful anti-spam and anti-phishing measures.
Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) is an email authentication system that allows you to confirm whether or not an email was sent and approved by the sender. This is accomplished through the use of a DKIM signature, which is an encrypted digital signature that is attached to an email message. When a recipient certifies that an email is signed with a legitimate DKIM signature, it signifies that the email's contents have not been tampered with.
The Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) generates a hash value for a DKIM signature, which is stored in the domain specified. To authenticate the signature, the email recipient can utilize the public key published in the DNS. If the signatures acquired from the decoding of Hash Value in the header and the email are the same, the MTA may be certain that the email has not been tampered with during the transit.
Another email authentication mechanism is Sender Policy Framework (SPF), which may be used to detect domain spoofing and prevent spammers from sending messages on your domain's behalf. It is made up of three parts: an authentication mechanism, customized headers that are embedded in emails, and a policy framework.
An SPF record is a record that is added to the DNS zone of your domain. It lists the IP addresses you wish to approve to send emails on your behalf. If you utilize a hosted email system like Google, Apple, or Office365, or an ESP like Higher Logic, this can be really useful.
The SPF approach allows the recipient of your email to utilize the message's “envelope from” address to check that the sender's IP address is allowed for delivery. The email is identified and refused by the email receiver if the sender's email server is not listed in the SPF record.
DMARC
The Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) protocol connect DKIM with SPF. It establishes a clear guideline for both and generates an address for sending reports of email messages gathered by receivers against a certain domain. It also offers a technique for determining if an email is rejected following the adoption of the SPF protocol.
To ensure email security across all boundaries, the three pillars of protocol-based security, namely SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, must collaborate. This is due to the fact that each of them serves a distinct function. SPF specifies which mail servers are permitted to send emails on your behalf, DKIM adds digital signatures to your messages for authentication, and DMARC specifies how SPF and DKIM interact and includes a reporting tool. If your email system employs all three protocols, you can be confident that your communications are secure and that the danger of phishing attempts and other risks is reduced.
Why EmailAuth?
Email security techniques such as SPF, DKIM, and best dmarc analyzer, are quite effective. Setting them up for each domain you own, on the other hand, can be a task in and of itself, especially if your firm has a large number of domains and subdomains. However, you don’t have to worry. We at EmailAuth help companies automate all the necessary email authentication protocols including SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and BIMI. You can also check your already implemented DKIM, SPF, and DMARC records for free using our free Dmarc record checker tools.
Original Content Source :- https://www.bloglovin.com/@infosecventures/stop-email-phishing-attacks-with-dkim-spf
