The Silent Assassins: How Impersonation Attacks Target CEOs via Email

One of the biggest email threats CEOs face today is impersonation attacks. Cyber attackers can create specially-crafted emails that use inherent vulnerabilities in the way email was designed to purport to be from the CEO or another person of interest in your company, potentially tricking them into believing the email was sent from the CEO when it was not.

To tackle this problem, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC were created as email security protocols.

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While it's not a panacea, implementing these protocols together will help with the following:

• Prevent unauthorized servers from sending emails using your domain name, reducing the risk of email impersonation attacks
• Verify that the content of your emails has not been tampered with during transit, ensuring the integrity of your emails and protecting against email tampering attacks
• Create policies that instruct recipient mail systems like Google and Microsoft on how to handle emails that were sent by unauthorized servers. This helps prevent malicious emails from reaching your recipients' inboxes and reduces the risk of email spoofing attacks.

When properly configured, these methods can help mitigate the impact of someone abusing a domain name or damaging the reputation of the sender with a partner or customer. They can also help improve email deliverability to the recipient's inbox and prevent email fraud by verifying the sender's identity and ensuring that the message was not tampered with in transit.

These are very technical procedures, but working with Guardian Digital to implement these methods will help to protect your company's email communications and safeguard your organization's sensitive information.