By Cargo / Refrigerated / Cold Chain
Refrigerated / Cold Chain Carriers — Email Security
78.1% of active refrigerated / cold chain carrier domains have no enforced DMARC — leaving this segment open to email impersonation, payment-redirect fraud, and cargo theft via phishing.
No enforced DMARC
78.1%
national: 80.1%
p=reject
8.7%
national: 7.5%
Microsoft 365
35.0%
national: 38.1%
M365 + no DMARC (carriers)
3,656
national: 92,822
MTA-STS
3.2%
national: 3.3%
DNSSEC
8.0%
national: 6.1%
Dead domains
745
of 14,538 scanned
Total carriers
16,211
745 with dead domain
Risk bands — Refrigerated / Cold Chain carriers
Carrier counts by risk band (composite email-security pain score). Critical = score 70+; Minimal = score <15.
| Risk band | Score range | Carriers | Domains |
|---|---|---|---|
| Critical | score 70+ | 1,240 | 1,172 |
| High | score 50–69 | 4,651 | 4,286 |
| Medium | score 30–49 | 6,596 | 5,920 |
| Low | score 15–29 | 2,835 | 2,296 |
| Minimal | score <15 | 144 | 119 |
Refrigerated / Cold Chain vs. national average
What the Refrigerated / Cold Chain numbers actually mean
Segment exposure framing. Refrigerated and cold-chain loads are time-critical — a redirected payment means delayed dispatch means spoiled cargo. That time pressure is exactly what attackers exploit to get a wire authorized before verification.
DMARC posture. The refrigerated / cold chainsegment's share of carrier domains with no enforced DMARC sits at 78.1% — better than the national average by 2.0 points. Refrigerated / Cold Chain carriers adopt enforced p=reject DMARC at a meaningfully higher rate than the national pool. At the protective end of the distribution, 8.7% of segment domains are at p=reject — the only DMARC policy that actually instructs receivers to drop spoofed mail.
Microsoft 365 surface. Microsoft 365 mailflow adoption sits below the national rate, which shifts the remediation surface toward self-hosted and Google Workspace estates where DMARC has to be configured at the DNS layer rather than flipped on in a tenant policy. That share is 22.6% of all refrigerated / cold chain carriers — a one-flag-flip remediation set that segment-specific MSPs can clear in a single quarter without touching DNS infrastructure.
Transport encryption. MTA-STS adoption sits at 3.2%, materially below the threshold a freight payment-redirect attacker would have to clear to be inconvenienced by transport-layer policy. DNSSEC adoption across refrigerated / cold chain carriers runs at 8.0% (vs 6.1% national).
Risk-band shape. Refrigerated / Cold Chain's critical-band share is 7.6% versus 8.4% nationally, with the pressure shifting into the high band (28.7% of segment carriers) where one or two control gaps still leave room for impersonation.
Best-practice control for this segment. For perishables shippers, treat carrier email-impersonation as a cold-chain integrity risk and require DMARC-verified mail before any rate confirmation is honored.
Compare Refrigerated / Cold Chain with other cargo segments
Segments closest in carrier-count rank to Refrigerated / Cold Chain. Each is scored on the same DNS-derived control set, so the comparison is apples-to-apples.
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Data as of 2026-05-20 from public DNS measurements. Statistics are domain-weighted unless noted. Cargo segment membership is based on FMCSA Company Census cargo flags. Methodology: read the full index.