Protect your organisation from phishing, spoofing, and email-based threats — SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and user awareness training.
Email remains the primary attack vector for UK businesses, with phishing and spoofing attempts growing in sophistication. This guide covers essential email security best practices including SPF, DKIM, and DMARC configuration to prevent domain spoofing, alongside practical user awareness training strategies. It provides a layered approach to email security that combines technical controls with human awareness to significantly reduce your organisation's risk exposure.
IT administrators and cybersecurity leads at UK businesses who need to strengthen their email security posture against phishing, spoofing, and business email compromise attacks.
SPF lists which mail servers are authorised to send email for your domain, DKIM adds a digital signature to verify messages haven't been altered in transit, and DMARC tells receiving servers what to do if SPF or DKIM checks fail, plus provides reporting. Together they form the standard defence against domain spoofing most UK SMEs should configure.
Incident costs vary widely, but UK SMEs affected by a successful phishing or business email compromise attack typically face losses ranging from a few hundred pounds in fraudulent payments to tens of thousands where invoice fraud succeeds, plus recovery time and reputational impact. Prevention through layered email security is typically far cheaper than remediation.
A layered approach works best: configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to block spoofed domains, enable built-in spam and malware filtering in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, and run quarterly phishing simulation exercises so staff recognise real attempts. This guide sets out a practical rollout order for each control.
DMARC enforcement means setting your policy to quarantine or reject rather than just monitor, so spoofed emails impersonating your domain are actually blocked rather than merely logged. Most UK organisations start in monitoring mode for a few weeks to review reports, then move to enforcement once legitimate mail flows are confirmed.
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