DMARC: The First Line of Defense Against Ransomware

DMARC has been the talk of the town owing to the evident increase in cyber attacks since 2020, the year of the pandemic. But what is DMARC really?

DMARC (Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) is an email authentication standard or protocol that determines whether an email is authentic or not. It relies on SPF and DKIM, two other protocols, to decide the authentication status of an email. It provides visibility of the sources that send emails from an organization’s domain, ensures better email deliverability, and provides security against domain spoofing, phishing, and impersonation attacks.

For detailed information, read more on What is DMARC?

DMARC has multiple benefits with the most important one being that it defends against ransomware attacks. Before we understand how, let’s get to know what ransomware is. 

Ransomware
Ransomware is a type of malware that is installed remotely on a target computer via malicious software. The objective of ransomware is to lock down all/partial files on a target computer to demand payment for the decryption.

Once the ransomware is installed in the target computer, the cyber attacker demands a ransom from the victim in exchange for the data. Victims are faced with a dilemma where they have to choose between their documents or pay a huge ransom to decrypt the data. Payment is usually asked in cryptocurrency, which makes tracking difficult.

Poor security measures result in ransomware attacks, in which users receive a malicious email. They end up opening an email attachment that installs malicious malware on their computer.

For detailed information, read more on Ransomware.

Let’s have a look at the recent security stats:

• There has been a 350% rise in ransomware attacks in the last two years.
• Post the pandemic, cybersecurity experts believe that ransomware attacks will reach a record high.
• Phishing was identified as the major mode of executing ransomware attacks in 2020.
• 68000 new ransomware Trojans have been detected for mobile phones alone.
• It has been estimated that a business falls victim to a ransomware attack every 14 seconds.
• Ransomware remains the most prominent malware threat (Datto, 2019).
• Malicious emails are up by 600% due to COVID-19 (ABC News, 2021).
• 37% of respondents’ organizations were affected by ransomware attacks in the last year (Sophos, 2021).
• In 2021, the largest ransomware payout was made by an insurance company at $40 million, setting a world record (Business Insider, 2021).
• The average ransom fee requested has increased from $5,000 in 2018 to around $200,000 in 2020 (National Security Institute, 2021).
• Experts estimate that a ransomware attack will occur every 11 seconds in 2021 (Cybercrime Magazine, 2019) .
• Out of 1,086 organizations whose data had been encrypted, 96% got their data back (Sophos, 2021).
• About 1 in 6,000 emails contain suspicious URLs, including ransomware (Fortinet, 2020).
• The average downtime a company experiences after a ransomware attack is 21 days (Coveware, 2021).
• 71% of those who are affected by ransomware have been infected. Half of the ransomware attacks that are successful infect at least 20 computers in the organization (Acronis, 2020).

DMARC Against Ransomware
DMARC, once implemented, does the following to safeguard your company from cyberattacks, and loss of data and money:

• Acts as the first line of defense against any cyberattack, including ransomware attacks.
• Helps your company strengthen security and stops impersonation of your domain(s).
• Authenticates all emails and filters malicious IP addresses. 
• Verifies the sending source and DKIM signature of incoming emails.
• Rejects emails that appear as spam or phishing attacks. 

Create your record today using EmailAuth’s DMARC record generator.