INDIANAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--New research released today by 250ok, a leader in advanced email analytics for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC), deliverability, design and engagement, reveals none of the industries reviewed have achieved majority DMARC adoption, leaving email recipients and others at risk of harmful email attacks.
Chinese brands are the worst offenders, as more than 95 percent of the top 100 most valuable Chinese brands have no DMARC policy in place. US and EU e-retailers fared marginally better, with 84.4% without a DMARC policy. Still, this means more than three-quarters of e-retailers studied leave their email and their customers at risk.
Of the industries studied within the United States, nonprofits saw the lowest DMARC adoption, as 94.2 percent of US nonprofits have no DMARC policy in place.
Law firms, the “leading” industry studied, still has only a 38 percent adoption rate. Software-as-a-service companies followed as a close second, with a 35 percent adoption rate.
DMARC is considered the industry standard for email validation to prevent attacks in which malicious third parties send harmful email using a counterfeit address.
“In the months since US Department of Homeland Security mandated that all federal agencies should achieve a DMARC Reject Policy on all domains, we expected enterprises and NGOs to take the same steps to protect consumers,” said Matthew Vernhout, director of privacy at 250ok. “By failing to implement DMARC, negligent brands worldwide are putting themselves and their customers directly in harm’s way.”
A DMARC reject policy protects recipients by requesting the malicious email be blocked from landing in the inbox, while a quarantine policy requests it’s moved to a spam or similar folder, while a none policy allows the email to continue to the inbox.
To produce the report, Multi-Industry DMARC Adoption 2018, 250ok studied publicly-available DNS records of nearly 17,000 domains operated by the following:
- Top 100 Chinese brands by revenue
- Top 1,000 US e-retailers by revenue
- Top 500 EU e-retailers by revenue
- Top accredited US, EU and Canadian colleges and universities by enrollment
- Top 1,000 fastest-growing Software-as-a-Service companies worldwide
- Top 100 law firms worldwide by revenue
- US nonprofits with 25 employees or more
To view the full report, visit s.250ok.com/AggDMARC18.
About 250ok
250ok focuses on advanced email analytics, insight and deliverability technology to power a large and growing number of businesses, ranging from clients like eHarmony, Furniture Row and Pinterest, who depend on 250ok to cut through big data noise and provide actionable, real-time analytics to maximize email performance. For more information, visit 250ok.com.
