How ADP and Facebook battle bad e-mail

ADP and Facebook use DMARC seen by both as a way to fight phishing attacks

Each day cyber-criminals around the world manage to unleash untold millions of spoofed e-mails that fake well-known brand names to try and fool victims that receive this fraudulent e-mail into opening malware attachments or visiting malware-laden websites. To fight this scourge, security managers at companies like Automatic Data Processing (ADP), and Facebook that want to protect e-mail users and their brand name ramp up defenses against phishing.

Of growing importance in the phishing battle is participating in the growing global cooperative effort known as DMARC, which started just over a year ago. DMARC stands for "Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance," and it involves adjusting e-mail servers to publish DNS mail records using supported standards that include Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail.

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"This gives us information to try and shut down phishing operations," Adkins says. So-called "takedown vendors" which Adkins declined to specify work on behalf of Facebook around the world to get in touch with hosting providers, for example, that are hosting any identified phishing pages.

Unfortunately, many of these phishing pages have been inserted into legitimate web sites owned by unwary businesses, sometimes by hacking these business servers. However, there are also dedicated servers for phishing, too.

Some hosting providers are more responsive than others and move quickly to remove phishing content, Adkins points out. All in all, DMARC and processes such as phishing takedown efforts are needed in the constant battle to keep the billions of phishing e-mail messages circulating out of the mailboxes of their intended targets.

Ellen Messmer is senior editor at Network World, an IDG publication and website, where she covers news and technology trends related to information security. Twitter: MessmerE. E-mail: emessmer@nww.com.

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