Tools and Standards for Email Scam Mitigation

You put server infrastructure in place to operate in today’s online world. You upgrade your server concept to colocation with a service like Global IP Networks in order to have access to more capacity and a higher standard than you have the IT department or budget to manage on your own. That addresses server availability, but that’s only one step in securing your IT infrastructure. Your domain also must avoid the reputation as a conduit for spam or scam emails.

Global IP Networks helps with that. We do not host pornography, gambling or other high risk sites which can be security concerns and potentially more attractive to hackers. But that’s still only one level of domain protection. To protect your domain more completely, you need to remain up to date on the latest tools, trends and standards.

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) is one such standard you may look at implementing to provide email authentication for email originating from your domain. DMARC establishes an industry standard for reporting spam and suspicious emails coming from a DMARC domain and detected by receiving domains which also use DMARC. Based on DMARC reporting, a domain which is the source of spam or scam email can update policies and filters and be advised of a compromise which might otherwise go unnoticed.

Another time tested tool to protect your domain is to create and monitor the classic abuse@yourdomain.com email address. It is common practice to establish an “abuse” email address as one of the first steps when your domain goes live. This provides a quick way to contact your domain in the event that a technical issue arises and is discovered by a technical expert outside of your organization. This outside expert will have no particular loyalty to your domain or commitment to inform you of anything, but may, as a courtesy, send an advisory email to abuse@yourdomain.com. It is your business’ responsibility to establish and monitor that address.