Email Fraud – Why You Need to Act

Email fraud is a growing threat against companies. Here are a few reasons why you need to take action.

• Business Email Compromise (BEC) increased in general by 14% during 2020.

• 65% of companies experienced a BEC attack during 2020.

• 42% of customers are less inclined to interact with a trademark after being targeted by phishing attempts.

Often, the fraud attempts are sophisticated and difficult to see through. A report from the FBI shows that a common method of email fraud is spoofing (e.g. a forged sender address) or that emails are sent from cyber squatted domains (e.g. email being sent from a similar-looking domain name with a different top-level domain, or from misspelled domain names).

Being on the receiving end of this can lead to extremely costly consequences and a damaged trademark.

What can I do to protect my company?

1. Ensure you have the right domain portfolio. Reduce your vulnerability by not leaving important domains vacant for others to use maliciously. It could also be relevant to monitor domain registrations that contain your name and are made by a third party.
2. Educate your personnel on phishing and email fraud, e.g., not to click on links in emails that do not look entirely correct, or to control the sender before making any payments.
3. Implement DMARC.

What is DMARC?

DMARC, or Domain-Based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance, prohibits direct imitation of the domain in emails. By ensuring that receiving inboxes only receive email that is sent by, or on behalf of, the domain, trademarks are protected against unauthorized use of their domain. (… and once this is in place, enjoy the benefits of VMC!)

Apart from making your company less vulnerable to email fraud and phishing attacks, there are other benefits of DMARC, such as improving the domain’s reputation and increasing your email deliverability. For companies in which emails are an important part of the market mixture, there are good chances of increasing the email ROI further. On top of the mentioned advantages of DMARC, there are also other ROIs to cash in on, for example, a lessened internal workload resulting from not having to spend time and resources on answering questions, both internal and external, about false emails.

You can read more about how we can help you increase your email security with DMARC here.

We are happy to help you with your next step. Contact us here!