Halon, the technology leader in email gateways, today announced the implementation of DMARC, a first of its kind solution to prevent malicious phishing emails for hosting providers. This new implementation will prevent attacks by spammers who use targeted spoof emails from recognized brands. Halon developed DMARC technology, similar to what is being used by companies such as Google, Yahoo, and PayPal, and removes the risk of fraudulent emails by enabling email receivers and senders to work together to protect end users and brands.

Phishing attacks are one of the most effective strategies used by hackers to penetrate unsuspecting user’s computers, but through implementing our DMARC solution, hosting providers can immediately eradicate this threat, said North American CEO and co-founder at Halon, Jonas Falck. We are driving the industry forward as Halon is the only vendor that has fully implemented DKIM in a commercial product that can verify email via DMARC. We hope that soon DMARC integration will become standardized across the industry so that phishing emails will be a thing of the past.

Key product features of Halon’s new DMARC implementation include:

• Avoids spoofing emails
• Reduces phishing attacks and malware
• Makes email more trusted while maintaining openness

Halon has consistently provided an innovative security solution to combat the emerging threats hosting providers face, said Anders Aleborg, CEO at Binero, a web-hosting provider. “With this new update, we are confidant that we can protect our brand and reputation from attacks like phishing emails. It is essential that we are able to verify legitimate senders, and with this new DMARC implementation, we now have access to a secure system that validates the security of our emails and protects our users.

Highlighting this growing trend, A Halon commissioned survey hosted by TNS Global found that nearly one-third of Americans admit to opening an unsolicited email, and these spam emails most often spoofed banking institutions (15.9%), social media sites like Facebook or Twitter (15.2%), and online payment services (12.8%).

Spammers who are continuously changing their strategies for targeted attacks will single out users who do not implement anti-spoofing technologies. In fact, most spammers use forged email addresses, which affect nearly all Americans (94.7%) who received at least one email containing a virus, spyware, or malware. In response to this growing threat, Halon developed DKIM libraries with open source libdkim++ to sign and validate email signatures. Halon combined its DMARC technology with SPF, which now enables email recipients to verify the validity of the sender.