Most of us have had that moment when we or a team member received an email from our email account and subsequently had a moment of panic wondering if our account was indeed compromised. Email spoofing is a common problem that can put your business at risk. It is a fraudulent act where an attacker impersonates your email address to send spam, phishing emails, or malicious content to your contacts. Spoofed emails are designed to trick recipients into revealing sensitive information, clicking on malicious links, or downloading infected attachments.
As a Managed IT Service provider, we see this as a growing concern among small-medium sized organizations. Here are some tips on how to combat this technique cyber threat actors are using:
- Make sure that SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are properly set up for your domain.
- SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are email authentication protocols that help verify the sender's identity. They work by adding digital signatures to your emails, making it difficult for attackers to spoof your email address. Enabling these protocols can significantly reduce the risk of email spoofing.
- Educate your employees.
- Having intentional training for employees to know what to look for, understand company policies (i.e., what do you do when you receive a phishing email, how to turn in suspect emails to IT, wire transfer protocols, etc.), and cultivate awareness of how to be vigilant when it comes to suspicious emails. Once a year is not enough. If you are a client of Ascend Technology Group, make sure your team is making use of the weekly videos that you get in your inbox, the annual training, and review the monthly phishing reports to see who may need additional training.
- Use anti-spam and anti-virus software.
- Invest in reliable anti-spam and anti-virus software to help protect your email system from malicious content. These tools can detect and block suspicious emails before they reach your inbox. A critical security layer is using software that deploys machine learning to analyze senders.
Phishing and email spoofing are serious threats that can compromise your business's security and lead to serious financial and reputational loss. Following these tips can help protect yourself from email spoofing and keep your sensitive information safe. If you would like help implementing these in your organization, please contact us to learn more about how we can help.
