DMARC Implementation Lags as Email Fraud Surges

itman · Nov 21, 2017

As spam dominates email traffic, most domain owners still have not attempted to implement fraud protection through the latest and most complete form of protection, DMARC.

DMARC, or Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance, is a standard that ensures only authorized senders can use an organization’s domain name in their emails.

Just 0.5% of the top million domains have protected themselves from impersonation by email authentication, leaving 99.5% vulnerable, the report found.

Over three-fourths (76%) of the world’s email inboxes support DMARC and will enforce domain owners’ authentication policies, if those policies exist. However, incorrect DMARC deployments often prevent email protection. Over three-fourths (77%) of domains that have deployed DMARC records remain unprotected from fraud, either through misconfiguration or by setting a permissive DMARC policy. Overall, only 15% to 25% of companies that attempt DMARC succeed at achieving protection from fraud, depending on category.

The report postulated that implementing email authentication would save the average company $8.1 million per year in cybercrime costs—$16.2 billion annually across the Fortune 2000.
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https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/dmarc-implementation-lags-email/

Minimalist · Feb 8, 2018

99 percent of domains are not protected by DMARC

“This report provides compelling evidence of the successes of DMARC adoption in protecting customers and brands, driving phishing rates near zero. However, with DMARC enforcement at only 27% of those firms who have adopted DMARC, it also shows how few enterprises have put these proven controls in place,” said Patrick Peterson, executive chairman, Agari.

According to Agari research, 92% of the Fortune 500 did not protect their domains with DMARC as of August 2017. However, 2017 saw two watershed moments: The Department of Homeland Security Binding Operational Directive 18-01 (BOD 18-01), which requires all federal domains to implement DMARC in 2018, and members of NH-ISAC (a cyber security forum for healthcare institutions) pledged to implement DMARC in 2018.
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https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2018/02/08/dmarc-adoption/

ronjor · Feb 23, 2018

By Markus Jakobsson on February 23, 2018

DMARC, the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance standard, is offered by email service providers to prevent phishing and spam related to domain name spoofing, while simultaneously providing greater visibility into email ecosystems.
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Minimalist · Apr 14, 2018

White House quickly improves email security after report

Less than two weeks after a report showed that only one of 26 web domains managed by the Executive Office of the President fully implemented a required email security protocol that prevented fraud, five more domains have implemented that protocol, according to the Global Cyber Alliance, a cybersecurity advocacy group.
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https://www.axios.com/white-house-q...ity-dbea7906-5170-45d8-801a-7123cf192b43.html

Minimalist · Apr 16, 2018

Cisco Launches New Email Security Services

Through an OEM agreement with Agari, Cisco is now better positioned to market and sell new services that enhance its Email Security and is offering new email security services to its customers, namely Cisco Domain Protection and Cisco Advanced Phishing Protection.
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https://www.securityweek.com/cisco-launches-new-email-security-services

guest · Jun 13, 2018

DMARC Will Not Make Email Secure
June 13, 2018
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/opinions/dmarc-will-not-make-email-secure/

The DMARC email standard is receiving increased awareness following the October 16, 2017 issuance of Binding Operational Directive BOD-18-01 by the Department of Homeland Security. BOD 18-01 mandates U.S. Government (USG) adoption of DMARC. BOD 18-01 states: [...]

Will DMARC actually make email more secure? The answer to that question requires that one look beyond the defensive measures to consider the responses which are available to threat actors.

Buried within the phrase “appears to come from a government-owned system” is DMARC’s Achilles’ heel. Appears to whom? DMARC focuses on how email appears to systems. Threat actors focus on how email appears to users. Thus, the problem stated in BOD 18-01 should be restated in terms of the threat actors’ objectives: Users fall victim to email that appears, as perceived by users, to come from a government owned system.

However, DMARC will make little, if any, difference in improving email security respecting phishing because DMARC inadequately addresses both the technical proficiency of dedicated threat actors and their tools of psychological manipulation.
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guest · Jul 18, 2018

Federal Agencies Struggle with DMARC Compliance
July 18, 2018
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/federal-agencies-struggle-with/

According to new research from Proofpoint, the majority of federal agencies are behind schedule when it comes with complying to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS's) Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 18-01.

Proofpoint’s research found that 28% of agencies have not yet begun to move toward DMARC compliance. Based on this finding, it is unlikely that all agencies will reach DMARC compliance for each of their domains by the October 2018 deadline – given that this deadline is only a few short months away, the research concluded.

Of the agencies that have started DMARC compliance, about 72% are working on their implementation project themselves and gathering DMARC data, and only 19% of agencies have engaged a vendor to help them implement email authentication

Federal agencies have been charged with many different pieces in their overall security portfolios, and DMARC authentication, though critical, is only one of those.
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Minimalist · Jul 27, 2018

US Gov't Outpacing Enterprises in Adopting DMARC Email Security Policy

Eighty-one percent of U.S. government agency domains have now enabled the DMARC email security standard, according to a new report released on July 26 by email security firm Agari.
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http://www.eweek.com/security/us-gov-t-outpacing-enterprises-in-adopting-dmarc-email-security-policy

Minimalist · Sep 17, 2018

Proofpoint: One month out from deadline, half of agency domains are DMARC compliant

With a month left on a deadline for federal government domains to implement a key email security policy, cybersecurity company Proofpoint says agencies have made significant progress, but is doubtful that each one will actually make it in time.
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https://www.cyberscoop.com/proofpoint-dmarc-dhs-bod-september-2018/

Minimalist · Oct 16, 2018

DHS must hold agencies accountable for failure to comply with email security mandate

After multiple government data security scandals, the Department Homeland Security gave civil federal agencies one year to bolster email security with a Binding Operational Directive. On Tuesday, that deadline arrived, but many of those agencies that were supposed to be more secure are not. That leaves agencies vulnerable to email fraud and less able to detect malicious senders.

It’s great that DHS set a mandate, but now it must hold agencies accountable for failing to carry it out.
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...failure-to-comply-with-email-security-mandate

guest · Oct 16, 2018

DMARC Email Security Adoption Soars as US Government Deadline Hits
October 16, 2018
http://www.eweek.com/security/dmarc-email-security-adoption-soars-as-us-government-deadline-hits

The directive was issued in October 2017, giving agencies a year to incrementally implement the new email security approach.

"Overall, the DMARC adoption rate is now at 85 percent, which is practically the inverse of where we measured adoption last year," Patrick Peterson, founder and executive chairman at Agari, told eWEEK. "When the DHS announced BOD 18-01 last October, the adoption rate was only 18 percent."

According to Proofpoint, the level of compliance with BOD 18-01 is a bit lower, with 62 percent of federal agency domains deploying a DMARC reject policy as of Oct. 11. In contrast, Proofpoint had previously reported that only 37 percent had the basic "p=none" monitor policy for DMARC in place back on Jan. 11.

Holmes added that DMARC adoption by federal agencies does need to be celebrated as it marks a significant improvement. For example, Holmes said that IRS.gov used to be one of the most heavily spoofed domains in the world
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guest · Nov 1, 2018

Microsoft and Amazon most impersonated in email attacks
November 1, 2018
https://betanews.com/2018/11/01/microsoft-amazon-email-impersonation/

Nearly two-thirds of all advanced email attacks used emails impersonating Microsoft or Amazon, according to new research by Agari, the email protection specialist.

Microsoft was impersonated in 36 percent of all display name impersonation attacks in the third quarter. Amazon was the second most commonly impersonated company, used in 27 percent of these attacks.

On a positive note the adoption of the DMARC authentication protocol is on the rise with more than 280 million registered public domains now signed up, an increase of 51 percent in the last quarter. More than half of Fortune 500 companies have now adopted DMARC, compared to just a third last year.

You can find out more by downloading the full report from the Agari website.
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"Email Fraud & Identity Deception Trends" (PDF): https://www.agari.com/bec/whitepapers/Agari_Q4_EmailFraudTrends_20181031.pdf

guest · Nov 20, 2018

Leaderboard Shows Adoption of DMARC Email Security Protocol
November 20, 2018
https://www.darkreading.com/applica...-dmarc-email-security-protocol/d/d-id/1333311

Email remains a major threat surface for the enterprise, and the Global Cyber Alliance (GCA) has promoted the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) protocol as a step toward reducing the risk. The GCA now has released an online tool that shows which domains have adopted DMARC as well as the adoption rate in various regions and industries.

DMARC is, at its core, a method for testing and proving the authenticity of an email message.

But DMARC adoption in industries and local governments is much lower than that of the federal government, as shown in the GCA's DMARC Leaderboard interactive charts. (Information on some regions is still being updated, however).
The GCA anticipates that the Leaderboard will be a useful tool for CISOs and other executives eager to convince their executive boards to invest in the technology and implementation for DMARC.
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DMARC Leaderboard: https://leaderboard.dmarc.globalcyberalliance.org

The GCA DMARC Leaderboard is an online resource that lists more than 500,000 domains from organizations around the globe, across multiple sectors.

The leaderboard provides information about DMARC and SPF in various formats (map, globe, chart and table), each of which allows for various details. This resource is free to use and will continuously expand based on the data provided by GCA and partners.
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guest · Mar 19, 2019

Only 28% of Gov.uk Domains Support DMARC
March 19, 2019
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/only-28-of-govuk-domains-support-1/

Only around a quarter of the UK government’s gov.uk domains have been set up to support an industry best practice email validation system, despite the imminent retirement of a previous public sector domain platform, according to Egress.

The security vendor found that just 28% of gov.uk domains have enabled Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC), which helps to prevent certain spam and phishing attacks.
This means the vast majority are not currently following the minimum standards suggested by the UK Government Digital Service (GDS) for email authentication.

Even worse, of the 28% that had enabled DMARC at the time of the study, over half (53%) set a policy to “do nothing” — which would effectively let through Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks and allow email buffering, while spam and phishing messages would be allowed into recipients’ inboxes.
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Egress: Egress analysis shows that three-quarters of Government organisations are not fully secure

guest · Mar 29, 2019

Only 10% of Tech Companies Protected From Phishing by DMARC Enforcement
March 29, 2019
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...protected-from-phishing-by-dmarc-enforcement/

Roughly 10,5% of tech companies have properly implemented the DMARC email authentication protocol to block phishing attacks that use email spoofing according to a study conducted by San Francisco-based anti-phishing company Valimail.
The Industry Report: Technology March 2019 published by Valimail shows the results unearthed after conducting a study of the current progress of the tech industry in correctly implementing DMARC for phishing protection.
300% increase in DMARC usage YoY
As further unearthed by the company as part of its "Industry Report: Technology March 2019", tech companies which use DMARC enforcement to as part of their anti-phishing protection strategy "had an average revenue more than twice that of the companies with no DMARC records at all ($10.2 billion vs. $5 billion)."

García-Tobar also stated that "While the tech industry’s adoption is comparatively high, as a whole, there’s still much work to be done. Despite the fact that roughly half of this cohort have DMARC records, only about 10% of tech companies overall have configured those records correctly, with a policy of enforcement."
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guest · Jun 6, 2019

InfoSecurity 2019: Majority of exhibitors unprotected against email fraud
June 6, 2019
https://www.scmagazineuk.com/infose...protected-against-email-fraud/article/1586703

Red Sift analysed the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) records that were associated with the primary email domains of the 401 exhibitors at the Infosecurity show.
It found that only a mere 13 percent had actually executed full DMARC [...] That leaves 87 percent failing at one level or another: [...]

Rahul Powar, co-founder and CEO of Red Sift, says that DMARC is "a basic security protocol that everyone in the industry should be getting right" and is concerned that information security should apparently be "ignoring this fundamental protocol that can stamp out phishing."
[...] As Tucker so rightly said in conversation with SC Magazine UK, "how can I trust your security if you don’t even protect your own domain?"
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Minimalist · Jun 11, 2019

Implementing Dmarc a top priority for UK

Basic email security should be a top priority for UK firms, followed by reducing third-party web exposure and monitoring data flows leaving the enterprise, a Rapid7 study reveals
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https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252464882/Implementing-Dmarc-a-top-priority-for-UK

guest · Jun 11, 2019

More than 3B fake emails sent daily as phishing attacks persist
Some 140,000 more domains are using DMARC records since the start of 2019, though DMARC-based enforcement remains complex to implement
June 11, 2019
https://www.techrepublic.com/articl...mails-sent-daily-as-phishing-attacks-persist/

[...] the Valimail Spring 2019 Email Fraud Landscape report released Tuesday indicates at least 3.4 billion fake emails are sent each day—making phishing attacks resemble something of a "spray and pray" strategy.

DMARC is gaining widespread adoption, with Valimail reporting that DMARC is used on "almost 80% of all the inboxes in the world." A survey of public DNS records revealed nearly 740,000 domains with DMARC records as of May 2019, an increase of 140,000 since the beginning of the year.
[...] The fear of blocking good (legitimate) email keeps a lot of domains from switching to enforcement, and thus they remain vulnerable to bad (fake) email," the report states.
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Minimalist · Jul 16, 2019

NCSC calls out Microsoft over Dmarc reports

The UK’s cyber security agency has called out Microsoft for seriously undermining global email security by failing to provide crucial reports from its email platforms
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https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252466778/NCSC-calls-out-Microsoft-over-Dmarc-reports

guest · Jul 16, 2019

Phishing alert: 80% of companies lack DMARC policies to protect against spoofing
DMARC policies aren't implemented by most companies , according to 250ok
July 16, 2019
https://www.techrepublic.com/articl...k-dmarc-policies-to-protect-against-spoofing/

However, nearly 80% of websites have no DMARC policy in place, increasing the odds that their domain will be spoofed and used for phishing attacks on customers, according to 250ok's Global DMARC Adoption 2019 report, released Tuesday. This is particularly concerning as 91% of all cyberattacks begin with a phishing email, the report noted.

DMARC is considered the industry standard for email authentication to prevent attacks in which hackers send malicious emails via counterfeit web addresses, the report said.
"Given the information available on the risks associated with leaving your domain unprotected, it's shocking the number of brands that still don't understand the importance of DMARC," Matthew Vernhout, director of privacy at 250ok, said in a press release.
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250ok: How has DMARC adoption evolved since 2018? It’s…complicated
Report: Global DMARC Adoption 2019 (PDF - 642 KB): https://s3.amazonaws.com/250ok-wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/09140509/Global-DMARC-Adoption-2019.pdf

guest · Jul 29, 2019

DMARC's abysmal adoption explains why email spoofing is still a thing
Fortune 500 companies, Chinese firms, and about everyone else, still lagging in terms of DMARC adoption
July 29, 2019
https://www.zdnet.com/article/dmarcs-abysmal-adoption-explains-why-email-spoofing-is-still-a-thing/

However, companies are not taking advantage of the protocol, despite the fact that DMARC has been around for years.
The good news is that DMARC adoption rate is better than previous years. However, the bad news is that the needle is moving too slowly to make a difference.

A November 2018 Agari report found that half of the Fortune 500 companies were supporting DMARC, but that only 13% of companies had actually bothered to set up DMARC rejection policies [...]
A quarter later, in February 2019, the same Agari reported that the percentage of Fortune 500 companies actively using DMARC policies had gone up to 15%.

But outside SaaS companies and some .gov domains, DMARC is not widely adopted anywhere else. Further, the lowest adoption rate found by 250ok researchers was in China, where only 6.5% of surveyed companies were using DMARC policies to protect against spoofed emails.
"This is likely the result of China's reliance on social platforms and SMS rather than email," said Matthew Vernhout, Director of Privacy at 250ok.
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guest · Aug 5, 2019

Heading to university? Watch out for a surge in phony emails about your studies
August 5, 2019
https://www.zdnet.com/article/headi...r-a-surge-in-phony-emails-about-your-studies/

Around 250,000 students will be waiting for confirmation from universities that they've had their place accepted – but researchers found that just one of the UK's top 20 universities has implemented full-scale DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance).

Just one third of the top 20 UK universities have published a DMARC record and only one has implemented the strictest and recommended level of DMARC protection, which blocks the fraudulent emails from being delivered to their intended target at all.
Meanwhile, two thirds of the top university haven't implemented DMARC at any level – and it's likely that with prospective students waiting to receive confirmation of their university places, they're essentially tens of thousands of prospective targets for cyber criminals who want to conduct phishing attacks.

"Phishers love urgency, they love circumventing rational processes and an acceptance letter from a university is kind of a big deal – it's hard to put an envelope in front of someone and say don't open it, you want to tear it open, physically or virtually. It's a perfect storm of conditions," Kevin Epstein, VP of threat operations at Proofpoint told ZDNet.
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ronjor · Aug 15, 2019

ASD tells Australia how to adopt DMARC to fight email spoofing attacks

Liam Tung (CSO Online) on 15 August, 2019
The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) has published a ‘how-to’ guide for tackling email spoofing to help more organizations adopt email security protocols that can thwart phishing and business email compromise (BEC) attacks.
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guest · Oct 8, 2019

Only 1 in 5 enterprises have DMARC records set up with an enforcement policy
More companies than ever are adopting new email security methods, like DMARC, but few actually put them to full use
October 8, 2019
https://www.techrepublic.com/articl...rc-records-set-up-with-an-enforcement-policy/

Security company Vailmail released the Summer 2019 Email Fraud Landscape report on Tuesday highlighting recent efforts by enterprises to protect email accounts from cyberthreats.
The report mostly focuses on the adoption rate of Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC), a system that allows email domain owners to protect their domain from unauthorized use or "spoofing."

According to the Vailmail survey, less than 17% of the 850,000 domains with DMARC records are currently at enforcement, meaning 83% have DMARC but no enforcement policy. Without an enforcement policy, fake email messages still get through.
Just one in five large enterprises that have DMARC records have also set it up with an enforcement policy.

"The sharp rise in DMARC records worldwide is promising, but the low rate of enforcement indicates there is a long way to go in establishing real trust in one of the world's most common forms of communication."
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guest · Oct 30, 2019

U.S. Universities Get Failing Grades for DMARC Adoption
October 30, 2019
https://threatpost.com/universities-failing-grades-dmarc-adoption/149697/

The U.S. higher education system is lagging when it comes to implementing email security – even though the segment remains a top target for phishing and spam campaigns.
According to an analysis from Red Sift shared with Threatpost, only 3 percent of the top 200 schools in the 2020 WSJ/THE College Rankings have the DMARC protocol configured at its fullest protection level.
Failing Grades
Of the 200 universities in the report, 116 did not have a valid DMARC record in place, according to Red Sift. And 78 schools only had the protocol deployed in reporting mode, meaning phishing emails could still find their way to the inbox, leaving only six schools that actually had their DMARC deployed in protection mode — the only way to authenticate and block suspicious mail.

In particular, attacks that use email impersonation to get recipients to provide their personal data, send money or click on a malicious link are rampant.
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