Email Security Check for Geraldton Estate Planning Lawyers: SPF, DMARC and DKIM Configured Against BEC

You hold testamentary instructions, beneficiary identities, and trust-account details for clients across the Mid West. A spoofed email purporting to come from your firm — sent to a beneficiary, a referring accountant, or a bank — is one of the most common ways an estate file gets compromised. This Email Security Check tells you whether your firm’s domain is configured to make that spoofing harder, and produces a written record you can keep on file.

Why it matters now

Australian law firms handling estate matters typically meet the threshold for coverage under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), which the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner administers. The Privacy Act applies to organisations with annual turnover above $3 million and “some other organisations,” and requires APP entities to handle personal information in line with the 13 Australian Privacy Principles — including reasonable steps to protect that information from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. Email impersonation of a law firm is a well-documented Business Email Compromise (BEC) vector; the Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes guidance for businesses on detecting and preventing BEC. SPF, DKIM and DMARC are the three open email-authentication standards that, when correctly configured, make it materially harder for an attacker to send mail that appears to originate from your firm domain.

The 5-minute view

• The Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) generally covers private-sector organisations with annual turnover above AUD $3 million and is administered by the OAIC
• Australian Privacy Principle 11 requires APP entities to take reasonable steps to protect personal information they hold
• Estate planning files concentrate sensitive personal information: identity documents, beneficiary details, health information, and asset registers
• SPF (Sender Policy Framework) declares which mail servers are authorised to send mail for your domain
• DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) cryptographically signs outbound mail so recipients can verify it has not been altered
• DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) tells receiving mail servers what to do when SPF or DKIM fails, and can produce reports on impersonation attempts
• A domain with no DMARC policy (or a p=none policy) provides no instruction to receiving servers to reject spoofed mail
• The ACSC recommends email authentication as a baseline control for organisations handling sensitive correspondence

What DRMO does about it

The Email Security Check is a single-domain diagnostic delivered against your firm’s primary email domain. You submit the domain (e.g. yourfirm.com.au) at checkout. We query the public DNS records for that domain and review the SPF record, the DKIM selectors discoverable from outbound mail headers, and the DMARC policy and reporting addresses. The check identifies common misconfigurations — multiple SPF records, syntax errors, overly permissive +all mechanisms, missing DMARC, or p=none with no aggregate reporting destination — and rates the domain’s authentication posture. This is the L1 productised entry-point to DRMO’s email-security capability and the same diagnostic that runs as the discovery step in the Pre-Settlement Shield package for conveyancing files.

The deliverable

• PDF report scoped to one email domain
• SPF record review with parsed mechanisms and identified issues
• DKIM selector discovery from observable outbound mail
• DMARC policy review including alignment mode and reporting configuration
• Red / Amber / Green rating per standard and an overall posture summary
• Plain-English remediation list, ordered by risk, suitable for your IT provider to action
• Delivered via email within 1 business day of payment and domain submission

CTA

Run the Email Security Check — AUD $99

A single-domain productised offer. No discovery call required. Suitable for any Geraldton or Mid West estate planning practice that wants written evidence of its current email-authentication posture to keep on file alongside its Privacy Act records.

For ongoing oversight across a multi-domain firm, contact DRMO for the consultative retainer.

Sources

1. Office of the Australian Information Commissioner — The Privacy Act: https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/the-privacy-act
2. Australian Cyber Security Centre — general guidance on Business Email Compromise published at https://www.cyber.gov.au/
3. Federal Register of Legislation — Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), accessible via https://www.legislation.gov.au/

DRMO capability references:

• Email Security Check (L1 productised service shape)
• Pre-Settlement Shield (L3 Shield package — email authentication discovery step)