1 in 4 emails from a federal .gov account is fraudulent

More than 25 percent of emails sent from federal email addresses are fraudulent, according to figures from an email security company, reports The Hill.

Agari is a contractor that works with more than 400 federal websites to help fight email fraud. Out of the more than 335 million federal emails Agari studied, it determined more than 85 million were fake.

Agari deployed what's called the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance protocol to authenticate emails. This protocol double-checks that each message was actually sent by its listed sender. In fact, last week the Department of Homeland Security issued a directive requiring all federal agencies to implement DMARC.

Only 18 percent of federal web domains have DMARC and of those, more than half do not take advantage of its option that allows email providers delete fraudulent emails or send them to spam, notes Agari.

DHS gave agencies 90 days to implement the DMARC protocol, according to The Hill.

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