Technology startup Sendmarc has rapidly expanded its partner and customer base since it was established in 2018 and is making strides in ensuring widespread email protection against fraudsters.

The company is the first in South Africa to help small and large businesses implement the Domain Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) industry standard for email protection.

Sendmarc co-founder Sam Hutchinson tells Engineering News that the service is vital for cybercrime safety and that it protects against impersonation, or “spoofing”. This is important as about 80% of Internet fraud starts by email.

Implementing the DMARC standard helps to protect companies’ domain name from scammers using the domain name to send hoax emails to companies’ clients, suppliers or networks. The software enables the domain name owner to see whether someone is sending emails illegitimately, and helps companies achieve full protection of the domain.

Sendmarc has spent the last two years creating relationships and testing the software in the market. The company is currently analysing about 15-million emails a month for authenticity and aims to have analysed one-billion emails by year-end.

Some of Sendmarc’s MSP partners include Netsurit, Internet Solutions, Synaq, Turrito, Waxed Media, ITAnywhere, Touchbase Pro and Infoprotect.

“DMARC is a policy that a customer has to implement on their domain, which needs to be maintained and reported on. Once the standard is implemented, companies receive a lot of information about their domain, including where scam attacks are coming from.

“This data analysis [using Sendmarc’s software] is nonstop, so even if customers are fully protected, the data still needs to be monitored continually.

“To this end, the Sendmarc software analyses the data and provides meaningful insight to the MSPs, who then interpret the data themselves and continue helping customers prevent further attacks,” Hutchinson explains.

He says the market for email protection in South Africa is massive, with about 600 000 registered businesses in the country and each using at least one domain name for emails.

He points out that, in South Africa, conveyance and property companies are most often targeted by fraudsters, with scam artists sending fake invoices to customers, who then proceed to make payments into the wrong bank accounts.

Other affected industries include financial and professional services companies, as well as retailers, who often have scamsters seeking private customer information or to interfere with transactions.

Hutchinson says Sendmarc wants to make the Internet a safer place, with the initial aim to extend its service to 200 000 small and medium-sized firms in South Africa.

Further, the company is considering growing its presence in Kenya, Turkey, the US and the UK in future.