A missing DMARC reject policy or a stale SPF record isn’t a paperwork problem. It’s the open door attackers walk through. Three patterns we see in UK businesses every month, plus one public incident on the record.
£85,000 wired
30-person London accounting firm
An attacker spoofed the managing partner’s address and emailed the finance lead asking to redirect a client’s settlement. Without a DMARC reject policy, the spoofed mail landed straight in the inbox with no warning. The transfer cleared before anyone noticed.
What would have stopped it: DMARC p=reject — included in our £15/mo service.
3 weeks of lost mail
UK e-commerce brand, ~50 staff
They added a new email tool but never updated SPF. Half their order confirmations and password resets started landing in spam or bouncing. Customers churned, support tickets piled up, and the cause wasn’t found for nearly a month.
What would have stopped it: active SPF maintenance + DMARC reporting — we’d see the bounce in day-one reports.
£12k extortion paid
Manchester logistics SME
Phishers cloned the CEO’s domain because there was no DKIM signature to verify against. Staff received a series of urgent “invoice attached” emails leading to credential theft, then ransomware on a shared drive. The recovery cost dwarfed the ransom.
What would have stopped it: DKIM signing + DMARC p=reject — both covered.
€42 million
FACC AG — public incident, 2016
An aerospace supplier to Airbus and Boeing lost roughly €42 million to a CEO-impersonation email. The attacker used a domain spoof that proper DMARC enforcement would have caught at the receiving server. The CEO and CFO were dismissed in the aftermath.
Source: FACC AG ad-hoc disclosure, January 2016. The same attack pattern targets UK SMEs every week.