E-mails are a part of our everyday life, we use them to keep in contact with people all around the world, use them to monitor online shopping and much more. With an estimated 3.4 billion phishing e-mails sent per day and accounting for approximately 90% of all data breaches, security of e-mails is imperative to identifying malicious e-mails.
Several security measures that can be implemented to increase the chances of a phishing e-mail being spotted are detailed below.
Sender Policy Framework is a way for the recipient of e-mails to confirm the identity of the sender of the e-mail. This makes it much more challenging to spoof the e-mail address. By Configuring SPF, it will ensure that the e-mails are coming from the person who sent it.
DomainKey Identified Mail (DKIM) is a protocol that allows a message to be verified through cryptographic authentication (MD5 hash) by the mailbox provider. This is used to confirm that the e-mail address was sent by the individual/person it states it came from.
Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) allows policies to be applied to e-mails. For example, in the event that an e-mail does n Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance, pass a SPF or DKIM authentication, this e-mail address will automatically be moved to the spam folder. Additionally, any e-mails that pass or fail the evaluation will be reported back to the sender.
Spam filters are a program that is used to detect unwanted e-mails from reaching the users inbox folder. Common spam filters search for word patterns or frequency. This can often be configured by the individual and should be to an appropriate level to reduce the number of spam e-mails received.