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Breaking cybersecurity news, news analysis, commentary, and other content from
around the world, with an initial focus on the Middle East & Africa.




MIDDLE EAST LEADS IN DEPLOYMENT OF DMARC EMAIL SECURITY

Yet challenges remain as many nation's policies for the email authentication
protocol remain lax and could run afoul of Google's and Yahoo's restrictions.

Robert Lemos, Contributing Writer

March 4, 2024

5 Min Read
Source: MaximP via Shutterstock


Following stricter email handling mandates by Google and Yahoo, organizations
worldwide have quickly adopted a trio of email authentication technologies, and
organizations in the Middle East are adopting them as quickly — or in some cases
faster than — the global average.

Compared to about three-quarters (73%) of global organizations, about 90% of
organizations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and 80% in United Arab Emirates
have implemented the most basic version of Domain-based Message Authentication
Reporting and Conformance (DMARC), which — along with two other specifications,
the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Domain Key Identified Mail (DKIM)
protocols — makes email-based impersonation much more difficult for attackers.



On February 1, both Google and Yahoo started mandating that all email sent to
their users have verifiable SPF and DKIM records, while bulk senders — companies
sending out more than 5,000 emails per day — must also have a valid DMARC
record.

The new rules implemented by Google and Yahoo have had a dramatic impact on
adoption worldwide, says Matt Cooke, cybersecurity strategist at Proofpoint.



"After the deadline, organizations across the globe can no longer assume with
confidence that their emails will arrive in an inbox if their business is not
taking their email authentication seriously," he says. "Up until this point,
very few businesses demanded the people and businesses they communicate with
authenticated their emails. Now, it will — and must — become an acceptable
practice."



While the requirements of the large email providers have lent significant
momentum to the adoption of DMARC and its associated authentication mechanisms,
government regulations have also prompted companies to push for adoption. The
countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) — including Bahrain, Kuwait,
Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates — have created a variety
of industry and national regulations, such as the Saudi Arabia Monetary
Authority (SAMA) cybersecurity framework, that are prompting organizations to
adopt stricter email controls, Cooke says.


GOOGLE, YAHOO MANDATES

While the vast majority of regulations implemented by nations in the Middle East
do not specify that organizations must adopt DMARC, some European governments
are mandating the email authentication protocol, as well as the Payment Card
Industry Association's PCI DSS 4.0 for any entity that processes credit cards.





In the first two months of 2024, more than 12% of domains had a DMARC recorded
added. Source: Red Sift

Overall, Middle Eastern nations are ahead in adoption of DMARC. About 80% of the
members of the S&P's Pan Arab Composite Index have a strict DMARC policy, which
is higher than the FTSE100's 72%, and higher still than the 61% of France’s
CAC40 index, according to Nadim Lahoud, vice president of strategy and
operations for Red Sift, a threat intelligence firm.

There is "a strong maturity that is beginning to trickle down the supply chain
of the region," says Red Sift's Lahoud. "Widespread adoption promises a
transformed landscape: drastically lowering the success rate of phishing scams,
enhancing email reliability, and bolstering overall digital security."

Like most parts of the world, strict enforcement of DMARC — setting the domain
record to reject nonconforming email — is lagging. Only 43% of domains in the
UAE are set to reject suspicious emails, while 57% of those domains in Saudi
Arabia have the most strict setting. However, both countries are ahead of the
third of the Global 2000 companies (31%) that have set DMARC to strictly reject
emails, according to Proofpoint's data.



The mandates by Google and Yahoo for email senders to use email authentication
technologies has led to accelerated adoption of DMARC. More than 2 million new
DMARC records were created in the first six weeks of 2024, including a 41%
increase in records in the African market and a 29% increase in the Middle East,
says Seth Blank, chief technology officer of Valimail, an email authentication
platform.

"Implementation across organizations can be cumbersome and time consuming,
especially given the new requirements from Google and Yahoo," he says. "It's
critical to ascertain your security posture and understand your gaps now, so
that you don't get caught with undeliverable mail, or worse, abuse of your
company's email to defraud users."


START SMALL WITH DMARC

Security teams and email administrators that have not yet implemented SPF, DKIM,
and DMARC should use the Google mandate as impetus to get the project off the
ground, says Proofpoint's Cooke.

"If you communicate with customers via Gmail and Yahoo and have not yet
implemented email authentication protocols such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, the
biggest challenge you face is time," he says. "Rollout takes multiple steps for
each protocol and can be tricky, especially if you have several domains. Once
you have the protocols in place, you face additional challenges, as you must
maintain your DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records over time."

In South Africa, for example, 94% of banks and insurance companies have deployed
Sender Policy Framework (SPF), one of the foundational protocols on which DMARC
relies, while a smaller share of organizations — 78% of banks and 51% of
insurance companies — had implemented DMARC. 

Because email is used in almost all phishing attacks, and about 90% of
successful cyberattacks start with a phishing email, updated email
authentication regulations are essential for every company, especially in the
Middle East, says Gerasim Hovhannisyan, CEO and co-founder of EasyDMARC, a
provider of email authentication services.



"As political tensions escalate both within the Middle East and globally, the
likelihood of cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructure significantly
increases, underscoring the imperative for enhanced cybersecurity protocols," he
says. "Given the prevalent use of email as a conduit for such attacks, the
implementation of robust email authentication measures emerges as a crucial
strategy to safeguard businesses and nation-states in the foreseeable future."

Read more about:

DR Global Middle East & Africa



ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Robert Lemos, Contributing Writer



Veteran technology journalist of more than 20 years. Former research engineer.
Written for more than two dozen publications, including CNET News.com, Dark
Reading, MIT's Technology Review, Popular Science, and Wired News. Five awards
for journalism, including Best Deadline Journalism (Online) in 2003 for coverage
of the Blaster worm. Crunches numbers on various trends using Python and R.
Recent reports include analyses of the shortage in cybersecurity workers and
annual vulnerability trends.

See more from Robert Lemos, Contributing Writer
Keep up with the latest cybersecurity threats, newly discovered vulnerabilities,
data breach information, and emerging trends. Delivered daily or weekly right to
your email inbox.

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