Apple says it’s time to run your BIMI business
Apple will put another barrier against successful phishing attacks in iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Venturawhich will display the official company logo to help recipients genuinely identify fake emails.
Brand Indicators for Message Recognition
Apple’s upcoming operating systems will support Message Recognition Brand Indicators (BIMI). This is a specification that will allow the use of brand-controlled logos within emails and will be a way of letting recipients know that an email is actually coming from the company concerned. Google It has supported BIMI since 2021.
BIMI requires companies to authenticate their email using DMARC. Described in more detail by the IETF in a March 2015 documentDMARC helps email administrators prevent hackers and other attackers from spoofing their organization and domain.
The feature will not provide complete peace of mind.
- Not all companies will be certified (but if you want to start using the system at your company, the BIMI website good place to start).
- Many smaller companies are unlikely to receive certification, and the system itself may be abused over time – the people who carry out these attacks are always inventive.
- This feature also requires email client support, which will not be apparent until Apple launches the next iterations of its operating systems.
What BIMI provides
But what BIMI offers is a visual way to build trust when receiving a message, helping us protect ourselves from phishing and redemption by making it much more challenging for criminals to personalize brand names in emails.
That’s important in the plural sense – we have all experienced attempts at malware infection embedded in emails purporting to come from major brands.
It could also help protect enterprise communications by making it more challenging to successfully launch phishing and targeted efforts against companies or supply chain partners.
This is particularly important as ransom attackers are currently targeting smaller firms as larger entities implement better protection – and manufacturing firms often rely on security practices for date. That’s why the United States recently Cyber Security Agency & Infrastructure manufacturing has been identified as one of the critical sectors in the U.S. in need of better security protection.
The main use is B2C marketing, of course. BIMI will be widely used by marketers to persuade customers to open email marketing campaigns.
Combining the magic marketing sauce of a trusted brand with relevant content will always be essential to success. It is worth paying attention to a a recent study suggesting that consumers are more likely to open emails displaying a logo next to the email, and that brand recognition like this improves over time.
How it works
BIMI allows brands to verify the authenticity of the emails they send. Once verified, the system can display the company logo in a relevant location within a support email client. BIMI is a text file stored on the sender’s server, which ISPs that handle end – user traffic can then check for authenticity.
That integration between BIMI, DMARC, and the email client makes it challenging for spammers to figure out how to display a spoof logo in the same place. The effect of this is that customers can see if an email is genuine and can delete those that do not without ever opening the offending message, which will reduce the risk of accidentally playing malicious code .
Securing the Internet
Apple’s decision to support BIMI in Mail reflects the industry’s acceptance of the standard. Google, Yahoo! It is supported by Mail, AOL, Verizon, and Microsoft. Apple’s addition means that the standard has reached critical mass.
This is not the only attempt to lock in the Internet experience running across Apple platforms in its next OS updates. Determined to an alternative to standardizing CAPTCHA reduce online friction (and help protect users’ IP addresses). Its support for next-generation authentication in the form of pass-keys will be seen as a major step towards replace password protection with more efficient biometric account / service security. Apple continues to invest in privacy, with better protection against cross-site scripting along the way and endpoint security enhancements also on the horizon as Determined device management comes to the Mac.
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Apple says it’s time to run your BIMI business
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