Question

A company's user community is being adversely affected by various types of emails whose authenticity cannot be trusted. The Chief Information Security Officer(CISO) must address the problem.

Which of the following solutions would BEST support trustworthy communication solutions?

A. Enabling spam filtering and DMARC.
B. Using MFA when logging into email clients and the domain.
C. Enforcing HTTPS everywhere so web traffic, including email, is secure.
D. Enabling SPF and DKIM on company servers.
E. Enforcing data classification labels before an email is sent to an outside party.

Answer 1

To best support trustworthy communication and address the problems with emails in a company, Option A, enabling spam filtering and DMARC, is the recommended solution. DMARC ensures email sender authenticity by aligning SPF and DKIM, which is the direct issue affecting the company's user community.

Step-by-step explanation:

The user community of a company is being adversely affected by various types of emails whose authenticity cannot be trusted. In such a scenario, the best solution for the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) to support trustworthy communication would be Option A: Enabling spam filtering and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance). Spam filtering will help in reducing the volume of unsolicited emails reaching the employees, while DMARC helps in verifying that the senders of the emails are who they claim to be by aligning SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail). This approach directly addresses the issue at hand, which is the authenticity of the emails being received.

Implementing MFA (Multi-factor Authentication) as in Option B is certainly a good practice for enhancing security but is more related to the access control of accounts rather than the authenticity of incoming emails. Option C's HTTPS enforcement ensures secure transmission of web traffic but does not necessarily validate email sender authenticity. While SPF and DKIM in Option D are part of the solution, DMARC provides an additional layer on top of these protocols to report and respond to email authentication issues and is therefore more comprehensive when combined with spam filtering. Lastly, Option E's data classification labels help secure the content of the email but again do not address the sender's authenticity.