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Summary

Executive impersonation attacks (sometimes known as business email compromise scams) are one of the most common phishing threats that organizations are facing today. Attackers typically spoof the targeted organization's CEO or another high-level official in hopes that a lower-level employee will respond to their request. Below is an example of INKY’s CEO (Dave Bagget) being impersonated from an email address external to inky.com.

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When VIP spoofing checks are enabled, INKY will flag messages as a Spoofed VIP or Possible Spoofed VIP if it arrives from a sender whose display name matches one of the names on the list but does not match the email address associated with that name. Therefore, it is important to include all valid email addresses for each person in the list.

In order to minimize disruption in some cases, INKY will flag an email as Possible Spoofed VIP which results in a caution banner (yellow) as opposed to a danger banner (red). This is based on certain factors such as sender reputation and common industry email practices.

Info

Note that sometimes it makes sense to include other current or former employees who are commonly spoofed by scammers, even if they're not really VIPs at your organization.

Configuring Your VIP List

  1. Log in to your INKY Dashboard

  2. Navigate to Settings > VIP List

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Info

The email address you specify will always bypass the spoofed VIP check as these are considered safe. We recommend adding the VIP’s work and personal email addresses (if applicable) to avoid false positives.

Creating Exceptions for Trusted VIPs

Email addresses entered into the VIP list are considered trusted and will bypass the Spoofed VIP check. To create an exception, simply add a new entry with the VIP’s name and their trusted email address. It’s common to have multiple entries for the same display name if that person has multiple external email addresses that they regularly use.

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In this example, matt.smith@polvocapital.onmicrosoft.com and matt.smith@polvocapital.com will bypass Spoofed VIP checks if the sending display name is “Matt Smith”.