What is Email Spoofing?
Email spoofing is a technique in which an attacker sends emails with a forged sender address, making it appear as if the email was sent from a legitimate source. This is usually done to deceive the recipient into believing that the email is trustworthy, often with the aim of obtaining sensitive information or delivering malware.
How Does Email Spoofing Impact Businesses?
Email spoofing can have a significant impact on businesses. It can damage the reputation of a business by causing its customers to lose trust in the organization, resulting in a loss of sales and revenue. It can also lead to financial losses if the attacker is successful in obtaining sensitive information such as bank account details or login credentials.
How Can Businesses Prevent Email Spoofing?
Businesses can take several measures to prevent email spoofing. One of the most effective ways is to implement email authentication protocols such as SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance). These protocols verify the authenticity of the sender’s domain and help to prevent unauthorized access to the organization’s email infrastructure. (If you are using ActiveCampaign, you can use our DKIM, SPF, DMARC DNS Verification Tool)
Businesses can also educate their employees on email security best practices, such as not clicking on suspicious links or downloading attachments from unknown senders. Implementing two-factor authentication (2FA) can also provide an additional layer of security to protect against email spoofing attacks.
Regularly updating email servers, software, and security systems can also help prevent email spoofing. Additionally, businesses can consider using anti-spoofing solutions that automatically detect and block fraudulent emails.
Also known as
- Email forging
- Email impersonation