The most exciting time of the year is also the most vulnerable time! Protect your emails from phishing and impersonation during Cyber Monday &  Black Friday with DMARC. 

The holiday season is right around the corner, with millions of customers marking their dates and setting up reminders for the biggest budget shopping experience of the year! Black Friday and Cyber Monday are not just beneficial for customers, but also for hundreds of companies offering discounted deals during the holiday season that make their sales shoot up instantly. However, your sales are not the only things that shoot up during this time – so do fraudulent emails and phishing scams that impersonate legitimate brands.  

DMARC protection for Black Friday and Cyber Monday can take your email security from zero to a hundred in minutes, helping you pull up your defenses against impending phishing attacks during the holidays. 

Surge in Targeted Phishing Attacks during Black Friday

Kaspersky in their black friday cyber threat report for 2023 revealed the findings from their recent survey that detected 92,259 spam emails containing the keywords “Black Friday” within the first two weeks of November. This highlighted the surge in email phishing and email spoofing scams using discounted deals as the hook.

Black Friday Phishing Email 

These days scammers are adept at curating emails that may look and feel genuine to the naked eye but contain a phishing lure or malicious link aimed at defrauding unsuspecting victims. In a Black Friday phishing attack: 

• Cybercriminals usually send emails disguising themselves as a legitimate company or service provide
  
• The email might contain a lure that is too good to be true
  
• The email might contain a phishing link – a malicious link or attachment that usually leads to a fake website page or starts downloading malware into your system

Cyber Monday e-commerce security threats are also equally rampant with attackers using unbelievable discounts and deals as lures to draw in victims. They would use the names of renowned e-commerce platforms and online retail stores, showcasing high discount rates, amazing offers, coupons, and free gifts in their emails. Victims often can’t resist these lures, and fall for their malicious tactics. 

General Black Friday Safety Tips for Email Receivers

If you receive suspicious emails with seasonal bargains on Black Friday, here are warning signs to look out for:

• Companies launch email campaigns from their own domains, hence if the email sender is using a public domain you should proceed with caution
• Malicious messages often lead to fake websites that may contain several visual errors that you can detect easily
• Missing subject lines, a sense of urgency, and poorly written content are all indicators of malicious emails

How Can This Impact Your Brand? 

To make their fake emails look and sound genuine enough to scam millions of people, cybercriminals impersonate legitimate company domains. This means that a cyberattacker can forge your domain name (company.com) and use this to send hundreds of phishing emails from your own domain to your potential customers. These fake emails often bypass sophisticated spam filters to actually land in your clients’ inboxes and end up scamming them. 

What happens then? In a situation like this, your customers may: 

• Lose trust in your brand 
• Blacklist your domain 
• Flag your emails as spam 
• Ignore your genuine marketing emails the next time they receive them

As a result of impersonation attacks like these, your legitimate messages may appear malicious to receivers. This will increase your email’s bounce rates, cause a surge in customer complaints, and negatively impact your Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing campaigns, reducing your brand image and credibility in the eyes of your customers.

Take Back Control of Your Emails with DMARC

DMARC protection for Black Friday and Cyber Monday can help you get back control of your emails and prevent scammers from using your domain name to send fake discount offers to your customers. 

Requirements for Email Senders:

1. Setup Email Authentication with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC 
2. Implement a DMARC policy of p=reject 
3. Monitoring your sending sources with DMARC reports

Trust us, your recipients will thank you! DMARC or Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance, is an email authentication protocol that when configured at an enforcement level of “reject” allows you as the domain administrator to instruct the recipient of an email sent from your domain to reject the email if it fails to be verified as authentic.

Meeting stringent email authentication requirements filters out unqualified emails, keeping your receiver’s email inboxes spam-free, prevents potential email fraud, and strengthens your email communications with your clients

DMARC Cyber Monday protection directly puts the control back in your hands as it is much easier to enforce preventive measures against attackers impersonating your brand than expecting your recipients to stay vigilant under such circumstances.

DMARC Protection on Black Friday with PowerDMARC

For the best DMARC protection on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, choose PowerDMARC. We are a DMARC and domain security solutions provider, dedicated to helping organizations around the world prevent email fraud and domain name impersonation. Thousands of customers have relied on our hosted email authentication services to protect their email domains against attacks during the holiday season – with amazing results!

To get started with your DMARC black friday protection you can sign up for our DMARC analyzer. This will aid you in: 

• Activating DMARC easily for your domains 
• Changing and updating your policy modes with the click of a button using our hosted DMARC
• Monitoring your DMARC data with simplified, human-readable reports to detect sending sources impersonating your brand 
• Making a smooth transition to DMARC enforcement without compromising on your email deliverability
  

Email authentication can prove to be crucial during this time, allowing you to shield your brand from being abused amidst all the rush. It takes one bad email to permanently lose a customer, so take action before it’s too late – sign up today for a free DMARC trial! 

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from PowerDMARC authored by Ahona Rudra. Read the original post at: https://powerdmarc.com/dmarc-black-friday-cyber-monday-email-safety-tips/