Protect your brand: How to avoid domain spoofing in email

March 12, 2024

Email is the most widely used communication channel by organizations, and cybercriminals, aware of this, continue to take advantage of it to carry out all kinds of scams through phishing, phishing, BEC (Business Email Compromise) attacks, email impostors, etc.

Domain spoofing is one of the most common tactics used by cybercriminals. It consists of simulating the domain of a well-known and trusted company in order to impersonate it (or one of its employees), imitating or impersonating the name of the server or domain from which the message is sent. This increases the "credibility" and effectiveness of the scam by recognizing the brand and assuming the message is legitimate.

According to Proofpoint, 47% of respondents believe that an email message is safe when it contains a known brand name and 71% that an email address is always linked to the website it corresponds to.

Organizations should implement the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) protocol to strengthen protection against the risk of phishing.

✅ DMARC is an email validation protocol designed to protect domain names from misuse by cybercriminals.

DMARC does this by verifying the identity of the sender before allowing the message to reach its intended recipient. The "Reject" mode is the strictest and most recommended level of DMARC protection. It is a configuration and policy that prevents fraudulent emails from reaching their recipient.

Proofpoint's DMARC analysis of the domains of organizations on the Forbes Global 2000 list yielded the following conclusions:

27% do not take measures to prevent brand spoofing.
Less than one third have implemented the most restrictive DMARC level.
15% have an intermediate DMARC level.

Technical controls such as the DMARC protocol are extremely important to protect an organization against email-based fraud and cyberattacks, including the risk of phishing.

The new email requirements from Google, Apple and Yahoo are a great opportunity for organizations to take stringent security measures to ensure maximum protection of their email domains, drawing on experts and resources at their disposal to ensure they implement best practices and address domain spoofing threats, comprehensively.

Clean Email is Telefónica Tech's managed service that, among other capabilities, facilitates the implementation of DMARC and provides support along the journey to achieve the highest level of compliance.

Our experts are responsible for analyzing traffic, tidying up data and taking action to ensure that DMARC compliance levels are appropriate at all times. The service also provides detailed reports that give you continuous visibility into the level of security of your domains and your brand.

✅ In order to adapt to the size and needs of companies, Clean Email offers two modalities:

◾ Clean Email Business to protect SMEs from cyberattacks via email.
◾ Clean Email Enterprise for large companies.