The good news is that the five largest banks in the U.S. are deploying the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) email security protocol to prevent their brands from being hijacked and protect consumers from data theft, according to a new study from the Global Cyber Alliance (GCA).
An additional 22 banks out of the top 50 in the U.S. and 10 out of the top 50 in Europe have not fully deployed DMARC, preventing those organizations from gaining the benefits of DMARC. Reasons for this can vary, including that a bank is only beginning the process of DMARC implementation.
“We have tested and used DMARC in monitoring mode and are moving into “reject” mode to protect the more than 60 million emails we distribute monthly,” said Troels Oerting, Group Chief Security Officer, Group CISO for Barclays Plc. “We need more companies to deploy DMARC to strengthen the ecosystem. I call on my peers across the financial sector and other industries to implement DMARC as part of email security and anti-phishing efforts.”
Businesses and DMARC
Businesses that deploy DMARC can stop spammers and phishers from using an organisation’s name to trick unsuspecting customers and conduct cyber attacks. DMARC provides insight into any attempts to spam, phish or spear-phish using an organisation’s brand or name. DMARC is supported by 85 percent of consumer email inboxes in the United States (including Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.) and more than 2.5 billion email inboxes worldwide.
“DMARC prevents the hijacking of a company’s brand, protecting its reputation and its relationships with customers and investors,” said Philip Reitinger, President and CEO of GCA. “DMARC is proven, and it is free. Deployment is quite simple for many small and medium-size organizations, and reasonable for large organisations especially given the significant return on investment. If a customer can’t trust your email correspondence, they will be looking elsewhere rather quickly.”
