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The email authentication challenge

960 640 Guest Post

Email is the #1 way attackers target an organisation’s customers and email ecosystem. DMARC (Domain-based Messaging, Reporting & Conformance) authentication, specifically with an enforcement policy of Reject, is the single most effective way to close this vulnerability inherent to email.

While the premise of authentication is straightforward, organisations can encounter roadblocks and challenges along the way to an enforcement policy. These include:

  • The “many sender” problem
  • Ongoing configuration and record maintenance in DNS.
  • The cost of “doing it wrong”.

Managing this kind of complexity requires powerful, smart tools that organise the various sender, brand, and infrastructure relationships for you. Whether you are creating your own SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, or having Agari host them, Agari’s automation features will get you to enforcement quickly.

According to a study from Forrester Research, DMARC deployments using automated implementation tools like Agari have been shown to drive phishing-based brand impersonation scams to near zero almost instantly. Today, customers in numerous categories use Agari Brand Protection to manage nearly 257,000 domains with 81% at p=reject—far outperforming their industry peers.

Global adoption of DMARC topped 10.7 million email domains worldwide in 2020—reflecting a 32% increase in just six months as per H1 2021 Email Fraud and Identity Trends Report.

Agari Brand Protection™ solves these challenges.

Agari Report: New BEC scam 7X more costly than average, bigger phish start angling in

960 640 Stuart O'Brien

Sophisticated threat actors, evolving phishing tactics, and a $800,000 business email compromise (BEC) scam in the second half of 2020 all signal trouble ahead, according to analysis from the Agari Cyber Intelligence Division (ACID).

After attacks on Magellan Health, GoDaddy, and the SolarWinds “hack of the decade,” one thing is distressingly clear. Phishing, BEC, and other advanced email threats continue to be one of the most effective attack vectors into organisations. And it’s getting worse.

Throughout the second half of 2020, ACID uncovered a troubling rise in eastern European crime syndicates piloting inventive forms of BEC. Indeed, the state-sponsored operatives launching attacks from pirated accounts in the SolarWinds attack were just a few of the sophisticated threat actors moving into vendor email compromise and other forms of BEC.

But in November, a sudden surge in the amount of money targeted in BEC scams could be tracked back to the resurgence of one particular source—the threat group we’ve dubbed Cosmic Lynx.

After sewing chaos with COVID 19-themed scams earlier in the year, the group’s tactics shifted toward vaccine ruses. More alarmingly, the group’s emails also started requesting recipients’ phone numbers in order to redirect the conversation. It’s unclear if the request is designed to disarm recipients or if actual phone messages or conversations are now part of the con.

The second biggest driver behind the late-year increase in the amount sought in BEC scams is a potent new pretext—capital call investment payments. Capital calls are transactions that occur when an investment or insurance firm seeks a portion of money promised by an investor for a specific investment vehicle.

In emails to targets, BEC actors masquerade as a firm requesting funds to be transferred in accordance to an investment. Because of the nature of such transactions, the payments requested are significantly higher than the average $72,044 sought in wire transfer scams during 2020. The average payout targeted in these capital call cons: $809,000.

To learn more about the latest trends in phishing, BEC scams and advanced email threats and how to stop them, request information at https://www.handd.co.uk/agari-secure-email-cloud/.