Businesses still not ready for new DMARC rules

Despite them being widely publicized, Google and Yahoo's new email rules still risk catching out many businesses.

New research from EasyDMARC finds that, despite the email providers warning customers that failure to implement the DMARC security standard could lead to diminishing email deliverability, only 37 percent of IT decision-makers have rolled out the security measure.

Out of the 1,000 respondents across the US, UK, Europe, and Oceania, there is high confidence in the strength of current email protection measures. 81 percent of respondents say they are confident in their organization's email security measures to protect against phishing and other cybersecurity attacks.

However, only 14 percent claim to be 'very familiar' with email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, with a further 33 percent describing themselves as 'somewhat familiar.' 30 percent say they had heard of the measures but were not familiar with them, and almost a quarter (23 percent) were not familiar at all.

When asked if their organization had implemented email protections, only 37 percent state DMARC is operational. Almost as many (34 percent) weren’t even aware of their organization's use of email security policies. Only 29 percent of respondents say they are aware of the changes to email authentication being implemented by Google and Yahoo.

Gerasim Hovhannisyan, CEO of EasyDMARC, says:

While it's encouraging to see a substantial consensus among IT professionals regarding the potential impact of these standards, the disparity between recognition and implementation underscores a crucial area for improvement.

DMARC protocols represent an unequivocal step forward in enhancing email security, but if not understood or implemented, they could also have important implications for business revenue. It's crucial for email providers to ramp up efforts to raise awareness about these changes and emphasize the potential risks businesses face by not adhering to evolving cybersecurity standards.

While 40 percent of respondents say they would probably, and 19 percent say they would definitely consider implementing email authentication once they learned about the new changes, 30 percent say they don’t think the changes impacted them or would lead to changes in policy.

More worrying, for 22 percent of IT decision-makers, not even a decline in email deliverability in the months following the DMARC changes would be enough to influence their organization to implement email authentication.

You can find out more about the changes on the EasyDMARC blog.

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