Category Archives: Internet

How to Secure Your Email and Keep it Out of Junk!

PART 1 - SPF Record

Currently, the three protocols you need to put into place to secure and authorize your email are SPF, DMARC and DKIM.  This first post will talk about the easiest to implement, Sender Policy Framework (SPF).

To quote Wikipedia:

(See Sender Policy Framework: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework) “Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email authentication method designed to detect forging sender addresses during the delivery of the email. SPF alone, though, is limited to detecting a forged sender claim in the envelope of the email, which is used when the mail gets bounced. Only in combination with DMARC can it be used to detect the forging of the visible sender in emails (email spoofing), a technique often used in phishing and email spam.

SPF allows the...

What is 2FA? MFA? Are they the Same? Different?

You will see me talking about 2FA and MFA on quite a few posts and using the terms almost interchangeably - so what do they mean?

2FA stands for two-factor authentication and MFA stands for multi-factor authentication. 2FA really is just a subset of MFA.

MFA is a security protocol where a user is required to verify their identity by providing multiple pieces of identification before gaining access to either a device or application. Typically this is using at least two of the following factors:

  1. Knowledge - something only you know i.e. password, challenge questions
  2. Possession - something you have i.e. Yubikey, one-time password
  3. Inherence - something you are i.e. fingerprint, retina scan

So you...