DMARC stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance. It is basically the technology and system used to authenticate and validate emails. It acts as a protective layer and a protocol used to find out email sender information and share it with the email recipient.

Remember that the domain owner is responsible for creating policies for email delivery and blocking. They can also keep an eye on how their domain is being used by evaluating the reports. Apart from this, DMARC can also help businesses reduce the risk of different social engineering attacks.

In this article, you will learn about seven reasons why every business should use DMARC.

1.     Minimizes the Risk of Cyberattacks

Want to prevent cybercriminals from using your domain to send malicious emails? By using DMARC, you can easily do that. This means that cybercriminals cannot use your domain to launch phishing and scam email campaigns nor can they use your domain for spoofing purposes. More importantly, it can also help businesses save all the stakeholders, such as your employees, customers, partners, and vendors, from fraudulent emails.

2.     Secure Your Business from Scams and Abuse

Not only are cyber attackers targeting your digital assets, but they are also trying to trick your customers, employees, or even top-level executives by impersonating your brand. Imagine what will happen to your brand reputation if a hacker tries to impersonate your brand and abuse it or use it for scams. DMARC safeguards your brand from getting misused by fraudsters.

3.     Ensure Email Reliability

What makes DMARC stand out from other technologies is that it only allows authorized IP addresses to send legitimate emails from your domain. This prevents attackers from deceiving and persuading your employees or customers to take their desired action. Your stakeholder is less likely to get tricked as the sender’s email address might be using a different domain, which employees can easily detect.

4.     Boost Email Delivery Capabilities

When email linked fraud cases increases, email deliverability decreases. Your capacity to deliver emails is negatively impacted. Even if your email domain is used to fulfill malicious intent once, your email domain will be considered untrusted. Even worse, it can also get blacklisted. Thankfully, DMARC can help businesses overcome this problem and boost the email delivery rate.

5.     Give You Better Visibility Over Your Domain

One of the core purposes of using DMARC is to get more control and better visibility over your domain. It puts domain owners in the driver’s seat and controls how their domain can be used. Domain owners know who is sending emails on their behalf. Additionally, domain owners can clearly see which emails are being authenticated, which ones are not as well as the reason behind authentication or lack of authentication.

6.     Safeguard Your Business from BEC and C-Level Scams

Instead of targeting your network, database and the best dedicated server, some hackers try to get access to your administrative accounts while others attack top-level executive accounts. In some cases, they might even impersonate high-level executives who have strategic positions in your organization. They can use AI to mimic the voice of your CEO. Thankfully, DMARC can even protect your business from advanced email scams.

Vice President of HSB, Timothy Zellman said, “The scam is convincing because cyber thieves in many cases gain access to business email accounts and assume the false identities of company managers. With millions of Americans working remotely from home since the outbreak of the coronavirus, business email schemes could become an even bigger threat.”

7.     Bring Down Customer Support Linked to Email Fraud

There has been a steady increase in the phishing and business email compromise attacks targeting small businesses. Did you know how much do these attacks cost small businesses? According to Security Boulevard, a single phishing email could cost a small business $100,000. What is even more interesting is the fact that more than one-third of organizations have already received similar emails where the attacker pretends to be a senior executive or a partner, asking businesses to transfer money into fake accounts.

Apart from the obvious reputation financial damage, email fraud also comes with hidden costs. It can also increase your customer support costs as victims would reach out to customer support representatives for help and guidance. Tell your employees and customers to confirm the payment is legitimate by calling the person via phone instead of solely relying on email.

Conclusion

Most businesses still use email as a primary mode of communication, making it a prime target for hackers. Cybercriminals are leveraging emails to send malicious links, files or using it to track employees and customers. Businesses need to use technologies to secure their email communication so a cyber attacker cannot misuse it. DMARC fits the bill perfectly in this regard, protecting your business from a host of email-based attacks.

What tactics and technologies do you use to keep your email and communication secure? Please share it with us in the comments section below.