By Adriaan Venter, CEO: Cube ICT Solutions
Most readers will have grown up in a South Africa where the signed hardcopy was the ultimate in trustworthiness. Important letters, deeds of sale and similar were all set down on paper and signed to be trusted enough for action.
Then came email, followed in time by the Electronic Communications and Transactions (ECT) Act 25 of 2002 which granted electronic documents and signatures the same legal validity as their hardcopy counterparts.
Now, we see from ICASA’s most recent State of the ICT Sector Report that registered letters posted in South Africa are in fast and terminal decline.
All of this can be expressed very simply. Trust has moved online and there is consequently a clear shift in how trust is established in business communication.
At Cube ICT Solutions, we are seeing a growing gap between what businesses think is secure electronic communication and what is actually expected of them.
When it comes to email specifically, most local firms approach the world’s biggest enabler of business and every other type of communication as if it’s the 1990s.
An electronic communication strategy centred on basic IT hygiene from 30 years ago is no longer going to
secure your domain and protect your reputation. Relying solely on password complexity, neglecting sender authentication and assuming internal network trust were perhaps acceptable within closed network environments that no longer exist.
Today, however, this is largely ineffective for protecting modern email and domain security.
Many organisations assume they can continue sleepwalking into the future. Sadly, email authentication and domain protection really only make their way into the C-level suites when there is a high-profile phishing attack resulting in severe brand reputation damage and significant financial consequences.
Without proper authentication, email risks being blocked, sent to spam, or exploited for impersonation. In 18th and 19th-century Great Britain, tampering with or stealing from the post was, at several points, considered a capital offence. With email now the most pervasive form of global communication, it’s beyond me how any business or government leader cannot take their organisation’s email security seriously. Do not assume your email systems are secure until the worst happens.
This is the basic truism in business today: trust is no longer implied, it has to be verified. And the consequences of not protecting both your email and your domain name are equally simple: they can be used against you – without you even knowing. Just two years ago, cybercriminals hijacked the abandoned subdomains of major brands like eBay, McAfee and others. The companies involved were completely unaware that their reputation was being compromised by millions of phishing emails daily.
Fortunately, the growing adoption of email authentication protocols such as Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) are enabling organisations to verify sender identity, improve email deliverability, and reduce the risk of fraud. These tools essentially let the recipient know you are who you say you are.
The shift toward authenticated email reflects a broader trend in which trust, security, and verifiability are becoming central to digital communication.
After domain owners adopt authenticated email protocols like DMARC to verify their identities, prevent phishing and confirm that subsequent emails haven’t been tampered with in-transit, small and large enterprises alike find that delivery rates skyrocket as their emails avoid spam folders.
Implementing authentication protocols alone is not sufficient, however. Ongoing monitoring of sender reputation and domain configuration is required to maintain consistent email performance and ensure messages are not filtered into spam.
Trust is one of the hardest things to build in business and one of the easiest things to lose. In business today, it can quite literally happen overnight. In the final analysis, authentication is no longer optional, it is the foundation of delivery, credibility and security.