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Phishing attacks are one of the most effective strategies used by hackers to penetrate unsuspecting users' computers, but, through implementing DMARC on-premise, hosting providers and enterprises can immediately eradicate this threat, states Peter Falck, CEO of Halon Security. "This is essential for any corporation with a large user and customer base wanting to protect both integrity of their customers, as well as their own brand name and reputation."

Highlighting this growing trend, a Halon-commissioned survey, hosted by TNS Global in the United States, found that nearly one-third of US citizens admitted to opening an unsolicited email and that these spam emails most often spoofed banking institutions (15.9%), social media sites, like Facebook or Twitter (15.2%), and online payment services (12.8%).

SPAMMER TACTICS
Spammers, who are continuously changing their strategies for targeted attacks, will single out users who do not implement anti-spoofing technologies. In fact, most spammers use forged email addresses, which affect nearly all Americans (94.7%) who received at least one email containing a virus, spyware, or malware.

Halon recently announced the implementation of DMARC, a solution to prevent malicious phishing emails for hosting providers/enterprise on-premise installation. This new implementation is all about preventing attacks by spammers who use targeted spoof emails from recognised brands. The DMARC technology, similar to that currently being used by world-known companies, such as Google, Yahoo, and PayPal, removes the risk of fraudulent emails by enabling email receivers and senders to work together to protect end users and brands, states Halon.

The recommendation is to use DKIM libraries with open source libdkim++ to sign and validate email signatures in combination with DMARC/SPF, which now enables email recipients to verify the validity of the sender.

The technology is now available and, once the implementation becomes standardised across the industry, phishing emails will be a thing of the past, Halon insists.

KEY BENEFITS
Key benefits provided from implementing DMARC on-premise include:

• Ensures sending server is a trusted resource with SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) validation against the domain of the 'FROM' header
• Avoids spoofing emails
• Reduces phishing attacks and malware
• Makes email more trusted while maintaining openness.

One of the largest Scandinavian hosting providers, Binero, has implemented DMARC and its CEO Anders Aleborg claims: "We are confident that we can now protect our brand and reputation from attacks like phishing emails. It is essential that we are able to verify legitimate senders and, with this new DMARC implementation, we now have access to a secure system that validates the security of our emails and protects our users." CS