Four Email Security Best Practices For The Financial Service Industry
Email spam isn’t just something that affects users. While they’re at a more direct risk of data loss, your company sending out email after email with promotional material can frustrate the users and prompt them to block you. What’s worse, it might not even be you sending many of those mails. Fake emails sent in your company’s name can damage the clients’ experience and hurt your brand. Whether you work for a reputable financial service provider or a small financial institution, you owe it to yourself and your customers to oversee how your domain is being used.
Email remains an important tool for any financial service provider. It is used for customer communication, marketing, transaction notifications, as well as two-factor authentication. If the email security is compromised since the credibility of your services and products are at stake. When a customer receives a fraudulent email sent from your domain, they will lose their trust in you, and consequently, your business with them.
There is some good news for the financial services industry since there are innovative technology solutions to help curb spam before it reaches your clients' inbox. Recognizing bogus email addresses is a familiar practice. Many IT service providers can help you with the perfect solution to your problem. However, if you continue to read you will discover four email security best practices that will be beneficial for your company.
SPF: Over the years SPF (Sender Policy Framework) has been successfully used to authenticate email addresses. The majority of individuals and companies think that employing SPF will alone solve their spam. This is however far from the truth. Unless you are in the IT industry or a hosting provider, you may not be aware of the sheer scope of email security and what you’re missing out on.
Using SPF will only establish the method for a receiving mail server to authenticate that an incoming email was sent from a provider approved by that domain’s administrators.
DKIM: DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), on the other hand, will validate that email came from an approved mail server. DKIM also allows you to add a digital signature to the headers of each email message.
This digital signature can be authenticated against a public cryptographic key that can be found in your company’s DNS record. In the past, mail systems had no method to authenticate the sending mail server, and the message had to be delivered.
To explain, SPF guarantees that the domain is approved to send from this host, whilst DKIM validates that the email wasn’t changed or had a virus assign to it amid the sending and receipt process. But that is still not enough to put a stop to spoofing.
DMARC: A more recent tool, DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Performance) permits users to configure certain DKIM and SPF guidelines and produces a report that shows all phishing and sanctioned email attempts.
TLS: Furthermore, to spam-proof your financial institution’s email, using a TLS (Transport Layer Security) can add further security. TLS is a set of cryptographic procedures that offer secure or private connections for every session, verification by employing public-key cryptography, and trustworthiness via a message reliability examination. A TLS facet calls forward confidentiality and guaranteed potential use of the encryption keys.
PowerDMARC specialises in email security in all its various forms to give you a comprehensive, easy-to-use solution that includes SPF, DKIM, DMARC and TLS. We don’t just deploy it for you, but help you maintain your DMARC records and keep your systems up to date.
Customer trust in financial services is crucial and these four security measures will help you to maintain that trust in interdepartment, partner and customer email communications.
About Us: PowerDMARC is an email analytics software platform that offers All-In-1 solution for securing email and domain infrastructure. Being an affiliate of Global Cyber Alliance, the company strives to ensure individuals and businesses are safe against phishing and email compromise. With our unique anti-spoofing solution and email authentication tool, we have helped several companies in safeguarding their outgoing mail flow. Our tool allows customers to effortlessly configure the DMARC, DKIM, and SPF records for authentic domains and email services. The tool is designed at assisting companies to take security measures promptly to guarantee more vigorous email security. For more information visit https://powerdmarc.com/.
