Proofpoint released a new study on the inability of universities to secure email domains: 97% of top universities in the US, UK and Australia putting students, staff, and stakeholders at risk of being impersonated by cybercriminals.
Excerpts:
…97% of the top ten universities across each country are not taking appropriate measures to proactively block attackers from spoofing their email domains, increasing the risk of email fraud. According to the analysis, universities in the United States are most at risk with the poorest levels of protection, followed by the United Kingdom, then Australia.
These findings are based on Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) analysis of the top ten universities in each country. DMARC is an email validation protocol designed to protect domain names from being misused by cybercriminals. It authenticates the sender’s identity before allowing a message to reach its intended destination. DMARC has three levels of protection – monitor, quarantine and reject, with reject being the most secure for preventing suspicious emails from reaching the inbox.
DMARC analysis shows:
- None of the top U.S. and U.K. universities had a Reject policy in place, which actively blocks fraudulent emails from reaching their intended targets, meaning all are leaving students open to email fraud.
- Five of the top ten U.S. universities do not publish any level of DMARC record.
- 65% of the top U.S. and U.K. universities had a base level of DMARC protection (Monitor and Quarantine) in place.
- 17 (57%) of all surveyed universities implemented a Monitor policy, while only four (13%) of the 30 universities implemented a Quarantine policy.
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