Companies would implement industry standard secure e-mail. Digital signatures would be attached at an outbound gateway as opposed to relying on the individual to add the digital signature, making the method have a larger impact. The industry standard, S/MIME is adopted by most client software applications and digital signatures would be verified by most e-mail clients including the mostly widely used formats. Therefore they will verify the signature for authenticity automatically. Should an e-mail be received where the signature cannot be verified or isn't signed, the end user would know it's a scam e-mail and not from a genuine source.

The adoption rate is increasing, however to gain more momentum more organisations need to implement the technique. Its benefits are clear, implementation without additional software requirements for users, the "from" field is impossible to spoof without being found out. Any fraudster who has digitally signed an e-mail has to register with a certificate authority therefore providing a trail that is traceable and providing stronger evidence to present when prosecuting for scam activities. Using this increased security technology improves confidence and trust with customers.

There are downsides to using digital e-mail signatures which are:

There are still a few major e-mail clients that don't support the technology, mostly web e-mail services.

Recipients also have to get in the habit and be educated about how to properly inspect the e-mail "from" address line. A scam e-mail, as stated above, can still have a digital signature. End user must be able to recognise the correct domain and not be fooled by part mentions of the business name.

Recipients may not check to see if a signature has been withdrawn.

The Government has implemented the technology across many of its departments as have many organisations however hasn't reached the wider market yet, employees and the general public still need to be educated about how digital signed e-mails can reduce massively the impact that phishing scam e-mails would have.

This kind of technology can have a huge impact on fraud detection and scam prevention. It is worth attending professional scam events such as the scam events for Marcus evans to learn about the latest techniques worth implementing into your operations.