Research: Marketing Executives Underestimate Email-Based Brand Risks

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Valimail, the world's only provider of fully automated DMARC email authentication, announced the availability of a report by the Ponemon Institute that reveals how marketing professionals think about email-based brand threats.

The report, "Email Impersonation Attacks: The Unseen Brand Threat" was conducted by Ponemon Institute and released today. The survey of more than 400 marketing professionals showed that email threats tend to fly under the radar of most marketers, despite the significant risk of brand damage these threats represent.

However, there are opportunities for alignment with their IT and security colleagues over brand protection and visibility.

"This survey shows that marketing executives are, on average, far less aware of email threats that could impact their brands than their colleagues in IT and IT security," said Larry Ponemon, the CEO of Ponemon Institute. "However, it's also clear that there are real opportunities for both departments to score gains in deliverability and security by aligning on anti-phishing technologies."

Highlights of the report include the following findings:

• 78% of respondents say their companies experienced a data breach or cyberattack involving email during the past 12 months.
• The average company uses 13 cloud-based services to send email on their behalf.
• 55% of respondents say they are not confident they know all the services sending email on their company's behalf.
• 77% say that user convenience is the primary consideration when deploying email security solutions in the workplace.

The report includes comparisons with the answers to a similar survey that Ponemon Institute conducted with IT and security executives in September.

The new report highlights some of the stark differences: For example, 82% of IT security respondents are very concerned about hackers spoofing their company's domains, while only 52% of marketers share this concern ? even though such spoofing could hurt the deliverability of legitimate marketing emails.

Also, marketers generally believe that their companies are taking sufficient steps to prevent phishing and email impersonation, while IT and security respondents take a more pessimistic view.

However, marketers are more certain that their company had a data breach or cyberattack targeting their emails (78% of marketers vs 61% of IT security respondents).

The report also reveals areas of potential alignment between marketing and IT. Both cohorts, according to Ponemon's research, have a shared interest in increasing email deliverability, and both value increased visibility into email services (so they can know which are sending email for the company).

To download the free CMO report from Valimail, visit: https://www.valimail.com/resources/report/ponemon-cmo-report/ 

About Valimail

Valimail is the trusted leader in fully-automated email authentication, with the only comprehensive platform for anti-impersonation, brand protection, and compliance used by corporations and federal agencies such as Uber, Fannie Mae, WeWork, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Valimail Enforce is the only FedRAMP-authorized email authentication service and, because it uses no personally identifiable information (PII), it is also GDPR compliant. Valimail authenticates billions of messages a month for some of the world's biggest companies, in finance, government, transportation, health care, manufacturing, media, technology, and more. Valimail is based in San Francisco. For more information visit www.Valimail.com.

Contact:
Dylan Tweney, Head of Communications, [email protected], +1 650.605.3348

SOURCE Valimail