Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Maintaining secure and efficient email authentication is a foundational element of corporate email infrastructure, but managing the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) comes with unique challenges-chief among them, the DNS lookup limit. The IETF's RFC 7208 defines a hard ceiling: a single SPF record may trigger no more than 10 DNS lookups per SPF evaluation, or risk an immediate Too Many Lookups Error that can result in SPF failures and lost email.

TL;DR: If you're considering an SPF flattening tool to manage your organization's sender policy framework, you must understand what SPF flattening does, why DNS lookup limits are critical, the risks to dynamic SPF updates, potential security tradeoffs, the need for automated monitoring, DNS and SPF record formatting restrictions, and regular testing. Properly managed, a flattened SPF record can ensure SPF compliance and avoid errors, but improper use can lead to maintenance burden, rejected emails, and security holes.

For years, spotting a phishing email was almost a checklist exercise. Look for typos, watch for broken grammar, be suspicious of generic greetings like "Dear user," and check if the sender's address looks strange. That mental model worked because phishing emails actually looked bad. Which is no longer true. With the rise of AI, attackers can generate emails that are grammatically perfect, context-aware, and indistinguishable from legitimate business communication. The obvious red flags are gone. What used to look suspicious now looks completely normal.

By 2026, phishing has evolved in terms of methods in use and the scope of attacks to the point where static tools and email filters are no longer sustainable. In these conditions, the prevalence of manual malware analysis in security teams becomes an issue in itself. In businesses and organizations, the alert volume is too high to rely on manual investigation. It slows response times, overwhelms analysts, and lowers focus on high-priority tasks.

A lot of bad things start happening in the company's computer or network when an employee opens the email and clicks the link. A lot of people think that phishing only takes passwords. In reality, it makes things much worse for the whole company.

A new phishing kit, Tykit, is rapidly spreading, using malicious SVG files to mimic Microsoft 365 login pages and steal corporate credentials. Linked to hundreds of compromised accounts across finance, IT, government, and telecom sectors, it shows how simple code tweaks can outsmart traditional defenses. ANY.RUN experts traced 180+ sandbox sessions revealing the kit's infrastructure and patterns, and how analysts can detect it within minutes where standard scanners see nothing.

Phishing attacks aren't slowing down - they're multiplying. According to the UK's National Cyber Security Centre, over 45 million phishing scams have been reported since 2020, with businesses across the UK losing hundreds of millions each year to fake emails, texts, and cloned websites. These scams aren't amateur attempts; they're professional operations built to deceive even the most vigilant employees. A single click on a malicious link can expose sensitive data, disrupt operations, or trigger costly ransomware attacks.