Big companies in India are rapidly going digital, but their email security still remains a major concern. A new study by American cyber security company Proofpoint has revealed that 41 percent of Fortune 100 companies in India are still at risk of cyber attacks like phishing and email impersonation. According to the report, these companies have not yet implemented the strongest level of email security. In such a situation, cyber thugs can send fake emails using the names of companies and target people or employees. This report has come at a time when cyber crimes are continuously increasing in the country and online fraud can cause loss of thousands of crores of rupees. In such a situation, the question is, how big a concern is this lack of email security and what will companies have to do to avoid it?
According to ET report, American cyber security company Proofpoint studied the companies of Fortune 100 India 2025 in June 2026. Big companies like Reliance Industries, TCS, Wipro and State Bank of India were included in this. The purpose of the study was to see how much companies are using email security standards like DMark i.e. Domain Based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance. According to the report, 41 percent of companies have not yet implemented the strongest level of email security, leaving them vulnerable to fake emails being sent in their name and phishing attacks.
According to the report, DMark checks whether the email sent in the name of a company is genuine or not. Based on this, suspicious emails can be monitored, sent to spam or blocked completely. According to the ET report, Bikramdeep Singh, India country manager of Proofpoint, said that many companies are still in the transition phase because to implement complete security, all legitimate email sources have to be identified. However, cyber criminals take advantage of similar vulnerabilities. According to the report, 97 percent of companies have implemented some level of email authentication, but only 59 percent of companies are using the strongest “reject” policy.
The report has come out at a time when cyber crimes are increasing rapidly in the country. According to Home Ministry data, cyber crime cases increased by 24 percent in 2025. Indians faced a loss of around Rs 22,495 crore in 2025 due to attacks like phishing and identity theft. Bikramdeep Singh said that Artificial Intelligence is now increasing the scope of cyber attacks. With the help of AI, attackers can run phishing campaigns faster and create fake emails that look more trustworthy. Proofpoint recommends that companies adopt strong email authentication, screen suspicious emails carefully, and use phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication like Passkey.
