Recent email policy changes at Gmail and Yahoo are pushing businesses to significantly adjust the way they do email communications, including platforms used for bulk email sends as part of marketing campaigns. While organisations still implement email verification protocols to protect their people and brands against social engineering attacks, the value of these tools now increasingly extends to business efficiency.
The new standards will soon have an impact radiating far beyond Google and Yahoo— touching on sending from Microsoft cloud platforms. Not adhering to the latest requirements can mean that emails sent from these platforms are more vulnerable to being marked as spam, potentially resulting in blacklisting, penalties, and significantly reduced business efficiency for companies relying on these solutions.
“It’s not just marketing platforms sending out 5000 emails a day that are going to be impacted”, explains Sendmarc COO, Kieran Frost, “It’s every piece of infrastructure that you use for email sending, such as your everyday email platform, CRM or billing platform. If you’re sending to Google, or if any of your platforms send large volumes, then you’re going to have to adhere to those requirements for all your infrastructure.”
Frost confirms that email attackers are often well funded and organised – increasing the urgency for businesses to be one step ahead when it comes to email security. Threats come in all forms, ranging from opportunistic individuals, to loosely aligned groups, to state actors.
This need is front of mind for businesses who offer cloud-based solutions that incorporate email as a core functionality and is echoed by Mint Group Head of Managed Services, Mohamed Osman. “As cloud platform providers, we take recent developments very seriously. You can’t remove any bulk email sender or sending platform from the wider global context.”
Mint Group has a strategic partnership with Sendmarc that enables it to augment its cloud solutions offering to cover key areas of digital security, while Sendmarc benefits from the group’s wider distribution network to bring its offering to more businesses.
According to Osman, it makes sense for cloud service providers to partner with technical leaders, like Sendmarc. “It’s urgent that businesses fully understand the reality of not having their email verification house in order. There’s a real cost to not adapting to industry norms, no matter which platform you’re using.”
The key to these changes is finding the balance between achieving business objectives and keeping your data and emails protected. While deliverability is important from a business perspective, these changes are critical to comply with as they are meant to protect the domain against impersonation threats. While email security is still a concern for some organizations, the strategic partnership with Sendmarc ensures that Mint can cover this key customer need.
Despite the continued existence of serious email-based threats, Frost is optimistic about the future of email as a communication medium. “The one strength of email is that it’s one of the only truly globally accepted communication standards out there. And I think that’s really hard to beat.”