What steps can I take to mitigate damage from email spoofing and prevent future occurrences?
Summary
What email marketers say10Marketer opinions
Email marketer from StackExchange explains regularly auditing your email infrastructure and configurations helps ensure that SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are properly set up and functioning. This can help identify and address any vulnerabilities that could be exploited by spoofers.
Email marketer from Barracuda Networks advises to regularly check your DNS records to ensure that SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are properly configured and haven't been tampered with.
Email marketer from Snov.io shares the importance of immediately reporting any spoofed emails to the relevant authorities and anti-phishing organizations. This helps them track down and take action against the perpetrators.
Email marketer from Mailjet shares that regularly monitoring your sender reputation helps you identify any signs of spoofing or unauthorized email activity. This includes tracking your domain's presence on blocklists and analyzing deliverability metrics.
Marketer from Email Geeks explains that DMARC will prevent future damage, but won’t help with what has already been sent.
Email marketer from Reddit user u/mailauth shares using Google Postmaster Tools to monitor your sending domain's reputation and identify any unusual activity that could indicate spoofing. Also suggests regularly checking for any deliverability issues and monitoring your domain's health.
Email marketer from Proofpoint advises that training employees to recognize phishing attempts and email spoofing techniques can significantly reduce the risk of successful attacks. This includes teaching them to verify sender identities and report suspicious emails.
Marketer from Email Geeks shares advice about repairing the damage from email spoofing, including dealing with Mailbox Providers and black lists. He encourages taking action to stop the problem and prevent it from happening in the future, and emphasizes the importance of securing websites.
Marketer from Email Geeks shares that DMARC won’t help with look-a-like spoofing, only direct domain spoofing, but it should still be implemented.
Email marketer from SparkPost advises using strong, unique passwords for all email accounts and systems to prevent unauthorized access that could be used for spoofing.
What the experts say3Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise responds that the first goal of DMARC is deployment. Monitor what's going on with your mail streams. This is the most important step and it’s the step that gives the most insight. Review the data to get insights into legitimate and illegitimate sources sending email on your behalf and, also identify authentication failures.
Expert from Spam Resource explains implementing email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to verify the legitimacy of outgoing emails, preventing spoofed messages from being accepted by receiving servers. They recommend configuring these technologies correctly and monitoring their effectiveness.
Expert from Spam Resource explains implementing email filters to block spoofed emails originating from inside the organization by verifying that internal email addresses are not being used to send messages from outside the internal network. They suggest setting up rules to flag or block emails that fail this verification.
What the documentation says5Technical articles
Documentation from the Australian Cyber Security Centre explains that outbound email filtering can identify and block suspicious emails originating from your network that may be indicative of a compromised account being used for spoofing.
Documentation from DMARC.org explains that DMARC builds upon SPF and DKIM to provide a policy for handling emails that fail authentication checks. Domain owners can specify whether to quarantine or reject such emails, reducing the risk of spoofing and phishing.
Documentation from Microsoft Learn explains that DKIM adds a digital signature to outgoing email messages. Receiving mail systems verify this signature to confirm that messages haven't been altered in transit, and truly came from the domain they say they did.
Documentation from EasyDMARC explains using a DMARC monitoring tool to analyze DMARC reports and gain insights into your email authentication status. This can help identify spoofing attempts and other email security issues.
Documentation from Google Workspace Admin Help explains that setting up SPF records helps prevent spammers from sending unauthorized messages that appear to come from your domain. SPF specifies the mail servers that are authorized to send email from your domain.