What is email spoofing? Email spoofing is a tactic where attackers impersonate trusted individuals such as supervisors, managers, or even executives because of spoofed email headers. These messages look legitimate, making it easy for recipients to overlook the potential attack. In this video, we'll discuss what email spoofing is, how to identify it, and how to prevent it. Before we begin, be sure to subscribe to Ninja One's IT Video Hub for more tech content like this. How does email spoofing work? Simple mail transfer protocol, SMTP, which is used by services like Gmail and Outlook, lacks built-in encryption, authentication, or sender verification. This is what leads to email spoofing. Attackers can exploit unsecured SMTP servers to forge emails by modifying the mail from field in the header. Since SMTP doesn't verify sender identity, it's easy for attackers to impersonate someone else. However, attackers must carefully choose domains and configured the server correctly. Otherwise, spoofed emails may be flagged as spam or quarantined before reaching the intended recipient. Worried you might be a victim of email spoofing. Ask yourself these four questions. Does the sender have my company's email signature? Is any email address slightly misspelled? Was the message sent from a generic email address? Is the email asking me to take urgent action? Our blog goes over these checks in more detail, so be sure to check it out. How to prevent email spoofing human error accounts for the most reported security incidents, so the following preventative measures can significantly reduce your risk of a successful spoofing attack. Sender policy framework is a basic but useful tool for filtering illegitimate emails. It uses a DNS record to specify which servers are allowed to send emails on behalf of a domain helping recipients identify and block unauthorized senders. Dmar C builds on SPF by providing both authentication records and enforcement policies. It tells receiving servers how to handle emails that fail checks and can request reports that provide valuable insights into email traffic and potential spoofing attempts. DKIM focuses on email authentication through cryptographic signatures. It adds another layer of verification by publishing signatures that recipients can use to confirm the legitimacy of incoming messages. However, DKIM is also sensitive to configuration errors such as incorrect txt records or algorithm inputs. Email filtering solutions help detect and block spoofed messages by scanning for suspicious links, spam related language and sender IP reputation. These filters flag questionable emails and move them to separate folders. Email spoofing is one of the most common cyber threats today, so building awareness is absolutely vital in protecting your organization against these attacks. For more information, check out our official blog post on email spoofing LinkedIn, the description below.