This is one of the most asked questions that we come across from our customers. From the effort per-se it makes sense, reason being that SPF needs to be set in the company’s DNS server whereas DKIM has to be set in the sender’s mail server. Now some might ask ‘What is the challenge in setting up the DKIM in the mail server, the challenge arrives as majority of organisations use 3rd party mass mailers and CRM/HR service providers like mail chimp, Sendgrid, Zoho, Greyt Hr and many more to manage their customer reachout. And getting them to update the DKIM record requires an additional effort as most of the times these vendors are either unresponsive or lack expertise and that is the sole reason why the mail admins normally avoid the path of reaching out to the 3rd party mailers for setting up the DKIM and rather go-ahead with DMARC enforcement just by setting up the SPF records.
The Trouble
This approach however didn’t go well with one of our Banking customer, whose one of the mailing domains was in enforcement mode with just the SPF alignment. The mails admin tried setting up the DKIM as well however due to lack of response from the vendor they went ahead with just the SPF record. Everything was going fine for them till one day someone decided to remove the SPF record for that mailing domain (reason for which is still under investigation), and just like that around 20k mails got affected and were rejected by the recipient mail server in a single day. This was proactively identified and reported by ProDMARC and things are back to normal and now they are back again chasing the vendor for setting up the DKIM record as well but with more determination and rigour.
The Outcome
Achieving complete security is difficult, it not only depends upon your determination to fulfil it but also of others including your customers, partners, vendors and most importantly employees. DMARC works on 2 pillars SPF and DKIM and even though enforcement can be achieved by implementing either one of those however there is always a possibility that unforeseeable issues might arise which may lead to all your genuine emails getting blocked. Hence it is always advised to have a backup plan in place by implementing both SPF and DKIM before moving on the DMARC enforcement.
Conclusion
SPF and DKIM address two different, but vital, aspects of email security. In a nutshell, SPF allows email senders to define which IP addresses are allowed to send mail for a particular domain. DKIM on the other hand, provides an encryption key and digital signature that verifies that an email message was not forged or altered.
DKIM helps improve email deliverability and when combined with SPF, and Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) it can play a critical role in preventing email spoofing. Having both protocols in place is always a safer option to ensure smoother deliverability and an additional layer of email security.
Click here to check if your SPF, DKIM & DMARC Records are aligned properly or if you haven’t started your DMARC journey yet, reach out to us to know more about ProDMARC.
Email concept with laptop spam and virus computer monitor internet security concept, businessman reading electronic mail with a laptop. Spam, junk and e-marketing on screen, Spam Email Pop-up Warning.
Are you frustrated with your emails going to spam? If the answer is yes, then you must check out this article. Here you will explore six ways that can help you to fix the problem. So, keep reading.
If email is the main communication channel for your business, then email going to spam can make you yell at your computer. We can understand how irritating it can be to send an email, and not have the recipient open it since accessing the spam box is not a daily habit.
Before exploring the solution to this issue, we need to identify the problems.
Why are my emails going to spam?
According to Statista, half of all emails are spam. Email is a robust platform for communication for every person. And email spam is a serious concern that we face today. Email spam is rising as a severe problem on the internet today. Almost every email service provider has implemented some controls to solve the problem of Spam.
The email filters are designed so that users don’t have to remove the spam message manually. There can be many reasons behind your email going to spam. Here is the reason behind spam issues-
1. You haven’t set up proper authentications
One of the biggest reasons behind email going to spam is failure to comply with email sender authentication standards. There are three major email sender authentication standards namely DMARC, DKIM, and SPF. To ensure the mails are appropriately delivered in Inbox, you should ensure the email comply with the authentication standards.
2. Your IP address was used for sending spam emails
These issues are mostly seen among businesses. If you have taken your IP address from an internet service provider, then the possibility of your IP address being used for sending spam by older users in the past may be quite high.
3. Subject lines that can be misleading to recipients
Email providers like Gmail use spam channels to attempt to keep spam out of inboxes. One technique is to filter the email by its subject line. Assuming the spam channel sees too many spammy words, your email may be singled out as spam and get sent to the spam or junk folder.
Some of the examples of spam words are-
Free Gifts
Click here
As seen on
Dear friends
Information you requested
Save Big
Cash
4. The number of inactive email addresses on your list is too many
Over the long run, a portion of the email addresses on your database may get latent. Notwithstanding, if this happens, your email list can be loaded with inert clients. In that case, your email will remain unopened in large numbers, which can cause email channels to label it as spam.
How Can You Fix Your Email Spam Problem?
Now that you know about the reason that is causing the problem let us look at how you can solve the problem.
1. Set up proper authentications
Recently, spam channels are putting more weight on sender notoriety instead of simply the substance of your messages. The content of your email matters; however, somebody with an authentic email address could pull off some spam-contiguous content that a sender with an inauthentic email domain standing can’t. The ideal approach to improve your credibility is to ensure you’re appropriately checking your messages with authentication tests like DKIM and SPF. In terms of authentication, applying these DMARC checks is the best way to securely validate your emails.
If you’re utilizing free email providers like Gmail, you don’t have to stress over this. This possibly applies if you’re using a custom email address. You can set up these validation tests by adding TXT records in your organization’s DNS server for the executives. You can get the DMARC record that you need from your email provider.
2. Follow email configuration/same accepted procedures when sending messages
Once you have completed DMARC implementation, you are one step closer to avoiding the spam folder. You should also follow the following points:
Don’t use any abusive/obscene images
Try to ignore spam copy
Avoid unnecessary attachments
Final Thoughts
We’ve already established that there can be various reasons for email spam issues. The best solution to this problem is proper authentication. If you are opting for DMARC authentication, you should follow its DMARC policy. If you fail to complete valid authentications, you will stand as a malicious sender in front of the email spam filter. ProGIST believes in protecting both you and your clients’ email rights and privacy. ProDMARC helps you implement email authentication with DMARC to stop fraudsters from misusing your domain. Get Started with top-class cybersecurity solutions for your business at ProGIST.
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) is a method of ensuring the authenticity of an email sent from a specific domain.
Regrettably, this critical email security feature is not enabled by default for every domain, web host, or email server. Organizations and email administrators must establish and set up policies for DMARC.
We’ll go over how to set up a simple DMARC configuration on your own domain in this blog. The process includes 3 simple steps to optimally configure your email server to send signed emails.
Step 1. Generate a DMARC record
A DMARC record is a short snippet of code that is published to the DNS to tell the mailbox service provider how to handle an incoming email that fails authentication, based on the results of the SPF and DKIM checks.
DMARC records are text (TXT) resource records (RR) that are published in the DNS and tell an email receiver what to do with non-aligned emails it receives.
Consider an example DMARC record for the domain “sender.exampledomain.com” that reads: v=DMARC1;p=reject;pct=100;rua=mailto:postmaster@exampledomain.com
Log in to the DMARC dashboard to create a DMARC record for your secured company domain. Then navigate to DNS Records -> Publish DMARC Record and copy the excerpt displayed in orange on the page.
For the test domain DMARC site, here’s a sample DMARC entry:
For email whose breaches policies should be handled, the “p” option provides three options: none, quarantine, or reject.
The adkim and aspf parameters specify how stringent the DKIM and SPF policies should be implemented, with ‘s’ denoting strict and ‘r’ denoting relaxed.
The RUA provides an address for aggregate data reports, while the RUF provides an address for forensic reports
Step 2. Publish the DMARC record to DNS
Now that you have the DMARC record, publish it to the DNS so that email service providers can use it to run DMARC checks.
To do so, go to your DNS management interface and choose the domain for which you want to publish the DMARC record, such as mydomain.com.
Create a TXT entry with the following settings on mydomain.com:
Type: TXT
Host: _dmarc
TXT Value: (DMARC record generated above)
TTL: 1 hour
For instance, here is how it appears in GoDaddy’s DNS administration console:
It can take up to an hour for the DMARC record to become accessible after it has been published (usually much faster). You can then use the DMARC Checker tool to double-check if it was correctly published.
Step 3. Analyze aggregate reports
Every day, many email service providers send out aggregate reports. This means you might get aggregate reports the day the DMARC record is published.
However, your first aggregate reports could take up to 72 hours to come. Once you get the information, you must utilize it to correct your email streams.
Conclusion
Large enterprises have been able to reduce phishing-based brand impersonations to near nil utilizing automated DMARC implementation tools like ProDMARC. This not only protects the brand’s reputation and the effectiveness of revenue-generating email campaigns, but it also protects employees, customers, partners, and the general public from expensive email frauds. Get in touch with us to discover our email authentication solutions.
Submitting Online Internet Loading Progress Website Concept
A DMARC record is part of your Domain Name System (DNS) record, which is responsible for routing Internet traffic. Additional information, such as your domain’s DMARC record—a text entry within the DNS record that informs the world about your email domain’s policy based on the specified SPF and DKIM protocols—can be included in the DNS.
Set up a DMARC record for each domain you want to monitor before you can start generating and visualizing DMARC data. You can use our DMARC generator if you need help setting up your DMARC record.
Prerequisites Before creating DMARC record
Before creating DMARC records it’s a good idea to test DKIM and SPF.
Creating an SPF record
Creating a DKIM record
Create the record
DMARC is a system which allows email recipients to make better decisions depending on the reputation of the sender domain. It provides a platform for the sending side to publish policies to improve spam and phishing efficacy, essentially developing domain reputations. This aids in the provision of recommendations for dealing with messages that do not conform to the policies provided by the sender domain.
DMARC is aimed at:
Reducing false negatives
Providing authentication reports
Applying sender policies at the receiving end
Reducing phishing
Being scalable
An SPF and DKIM record must be published on the transmitting domain before DMARC may be used. You can configure DMARC by adding policies to your domain’s TXT records once the SPF and DKIM records are in place (the same way in which you published your SPF and DKIM records). Your TXT record name should read something similar to “_dmarc.your_domain.com.” Please replace the “your_domain.com” with your own domain.
Since DMARC policies are published as TXT records, they specify what an email recipient should do when it receives non-aligned messages.
When establishing a TXT record, the name of a DMARC record is “_dmarc,” which generates a TXT record like _dmarc.mydomain.com or _dmarc.mydomain.net.
In this scenario, the sender defines the policy as such that the receiver outright rejects all non-aligned messages and sends a report about the rejections to a specific email address. If the sender were to use the “quarantine” setting in the policy, it would look like:
and would request the action to quarantine on the receiving end of the message. In the next example, if a message claims to be from your domain.com and fails DMARC, no action is taken. Instead, these messages will then show up in your daily aggregate report sent to
Since the DMARC configuration recognizes that scaling out the deployment all at once can be difficult for certain organisations, there are some built-in methods for “throttling” the DMARC processing so that complete deployment can be achieved in stages over time.
The first step is to keep an eye on your traffic and reports. Assess the vulnerabilities (where messages are sent without being digitally signed or from invalid source IP addresses) and use SPF and DKIM records to address them.
As you become more comfortable with the findings from your regular aggregate reports, you will adjust the action on your policies to start quarantining. You can do this by using DMARC to change your TXT record to use the “quarantine” action. Monitor your daily reports.
Once you’ve been tracking your traffic and regular reports for a while and are certain that the sources seen sending traffic on behalf of your domain are all digitally signed, you can proceed to the next phase, which is modifying the policy to use the “reject” tag to completely deploy DMARC. Monitoring the files and spamfeed is an important component of maintenance.
It is also worth noting that the pct tag, which is optional, can be used to sample your DMARC implementation in increments. Since 100% is the norm, setting “pct=20” in your DMARC TXT record causes one-fifth of all messages affected by the policy to receive the disposition rather than all of them. When you want to quarantine and reject mail, this setting is particularly useful. Start with a lower percent to begin with and increase it every few days.
A conservative deployment cycle would resemble:
Monitor all.
Quarantine 1%.
Quarantine 5%.
Quarantine 10%.
Quarantine 25%.
Quarantine 50%.
Quarantine all.
Reject 1%.
Reject 5%.
Reject 10%.
Reject 25%.
Reject 50%.
Reject all.
Delete the percentages from your policies when you are about to finish the DMARC deployment so that the full action of “quarantine” and “reject” is now working at 100%.
Conclusion
After you have published DMARC records, DMARC data will start to be created in the form of reports within a day or two, giving you insights into how your domains handle email. These reports are based on XML and might be difficult to read and comprehend for humans.
If you receive a lot of reports, you will quickly realize that manually posting them every day is not feasible. ProDMARC specializes in processing these reports and determining the measures that must be taken in order for DMARC to be distributed more simply throughout an organization. If you have not started your DMARC project yet, we encourage you to get in touch with our experts at ProDMARC for better guidance. ProDMARC helps you implement email authentication with DMARC to stop fraudsters from misusing your domain. Get Started with top-class cybersecurity solutions for your business at ProgIST.
Shield Icon Cyber Security, Digital Data Network Protection, Future Technology Digital Data Network Connection Background Concept.
Since the early days of the internet, spam has been a persistent and chronic problem. Gary Thuerk of Digital Equipment Corp (DEC) sent the first unsolicited mass e-mailing (later dubbed SPAM) on May 1, 1978, advertising the VAX T-series to 400 of the then 2600 ARPAnet users.
The SMTP email protocol, which we still use today, evolved from these early ARPANET mail protocols (Postel RFC788 and RFC821) in the early 1980s, and has changed very little since then. The SMTP protocol has had little to no security built in since its introduction, and when used to send email, it offers little defense against spoofing of email addresses or servers. However, several new tools have recently been added to the email security arsenal to protect against these threats.
SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are all similar features for detecting spoofed or spam emails, but they vary slightly.
SPF (RFC 7208)
SPF (Sender Policy Framework) specifies a list of servers that are permitted to send email for a particular domain using a DNS entry. Its security is based on the fact that only authorized domain administrators have access to the DNS zone records for the domain.
DKIM (RFC 6376)
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) differs from SPF in that it verifies that the receiving server is allowed to send mail for the domain and that the quality of the mail has not changed since it was sent. Using DKIM keys stored in DNS and DKIM uses a public/private key signing mechanism.
The following steps are applied to the email process with DKIM:
Sending servers create a signature with their DKIM private key and insert it into the email header (DKIM-Signature).
Email recipients look up the DKIM public key in the sending domain’s DNS TXT record, which is then used to verify the DKIM-Signature attached to the email.
If the email body content is modified, the email signature will no longer match and validation will fail.
This process verifies that the email content has not been tampered with, as well as that the email was sent from a domain-approved server.
DMARC (RFC 7489)
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) incorporates elements of both SPF and DKIM by stating a simple DMARC policy that can be used in both tools, as well as allowing the domain administrator to set an address that can be used to submit information about forged mail message statistics gathered by receivers against the same domain, for example:
Relative levels of spoofing of your domain(s).
Who is spoofing email purporting to be from your domain?
Does that mean your spam problem is resolved?
In an ideal world, all email servers would use these techniques, and SPAM would be significantly reduced. However, since making a mistake in configuring the necessary DNS TXT records can result in the loss of important emails, some domain owners have been hesitant to implement the methods.
Despite this, major email domain owners such as Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have implemented these approaches.
SPAM can still be transmitted via compromised accounts and servers, shared hosting email servers, and misconfigured servers, so multilevel email protection is the only way to ensure a clean and safe email feed.
How effective are DMARC, SPF, and DKIM?
These tools will undoubtedly have a significant effect on the fight against SPAM, and the more domains that use them, the better. However, caution should be exercised during DMARC implementation to ensure that all settings are right before going live. SPF, for example, allows you to set the changes in a test mode, which means that recipient domains will not block any mail that fails the test.
Wrapping Up
ProgIST believes in protecting both your and your clients’ email rights and privacy. ProDMARC helps you implement DMARC authentication to stop fraudsters from misusing your domain. Get Started with top-class cybersecurity solutions for your business at ProgIST.
It is a well-known fact that in most of the cyber-frauds, the cyber criminals impersonate trusted identities, mainly because the chances of the victim falling for such emails are high. These attacks are commonly called as email spoofing.
Let us look at some quick facts about email spoofing attacks:
Over 70% of fraudulent emails are directly sent from a domain name of the victim organisation.
According to a latest email security risk assessment, there is a surge in email spoofing attacks by over 22% as compared to previous quarter.
These attack types are highly sophisticated and it requires us to take a multi-layered approach to detect and stop such attacks
Types of Impersonation Attacks
The email spoofing attacks most commonly used for targeting the dependent parties of the organisation like their customers, partners and associates. The victims might be able to differentiate such emails from legitimate emails and might fall for such attacks
Another major attack exploiting identity theft is CEO/CFO frauds. Here the employees are tricked to make payments to fraudsters account or share confidential information of the organisation.
Why DMARC?
The only way to protect your dependent parties from falling for such attacks is to protect your mailing domain with Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) security control. It works by prohibiting anybody except expressly approved senders from using an organization’s domain (including internal and third-party mailing systems) to send an email. Additionally, DMARC reports also helps you to identify and appropriately configure all your legitimate email senders and also to visualize the threat targeting the organisation’s domain.
How does ProDMARC help you in DMARC journey?
ProDMARC is built on a mission to achieve a secure and spoofing free email channels across all of internet space; makes reporting of DMARC, providing volumes and trends of the outbound mails including that of phishing campaigns and yield confirmation for reliability of the outbound mails in terms of SPF, DKIM & DMARC conformance; smooth and uncomplicated. It helps in gaining visibility on your email domain getting used on your behalf by third parties. It’s important to gain visibility of unauthorized emails which might be getting sent from your brand; ensures that emails do not get blocked due to misconfigurations, making the best use of the customer email communication; generates actionable threat intelligence feeds for your security and transaction monitoring systems helping to block targeted attacks proactively and also helps in identification of lookalike domains for your brand.
To summarize, ProDMARC helps improve customer trust in email communications.
Get in touch with us or schedule your 15-day trial for the most advanced email security solutions.
Businessman working with tablet. Checking mark up on the check boxes. Successful completion of business tasks. Digital marketing of statistics level up of graph. Business management goal strategy.
DKIM stands for Domain Keys Identified Mail which is an email authentication technique that helps the receiver to check whether the email was sent and authorized by the owner of that domain. It is done by giving the email a digital signature. It is a header added to the
message and is secured with encryption. The DKIM signatures are not visible to end-users and the validation is done on the server level.
What is a DKIM selector?
The DKIM selector is a string used by the outgoing server to detect the private key to sign the email message and by the receiving server to detect the public key to verify whether the email message is from a trusted source or not.
Every time a private or public key pair is generated, a tuple { selector, private key, public key } is created, where the selector is used to detect the private key and the public key.
How does the DKIM selector work?
When the signing server chooses the selector, the server makes use of the selector to find the private key only accessible to the server, to decode the signature. Once the signature is decoded, the DKIM selector is inserted in the email headers as an s= tag, then the email is sent.
Let us understand by the following example:
Let’s consider that the selector chosen by the signing server is s1, the tag will look like s=s1. Further, the selector can be any arbitrarily chosen string like itismyselector1122, as long as it is indicating towards a valid private or public key pair.
Here is a practical example of DKIM signature header
Here the DKIM selector used in the DKIM signature is s=s1.
When the email reaches the receiving server, the server automatically looks at the email headers to locate the s= tag. Now if the tag is present then the server will perform the role of extracting the selector from the tag.
When the public key is found, the server makes use of it to decrypt the message to verify the integrity. If the integrity is verified, the DKIM authentication succeeds otherwise it fails.
In case no public key is found then the DKIM authentication fails.
How do I find my DKIM selector?
A DKIM selector is specified when the private or public key pair gets created when it is set up for the email sender, and it can be any random or arbitrary string of text.
The selector is inserted into the DKIM-Signature email header as an s= tag when the email is sent. The easiest way to discover the selector for your domain is by sending an email to yourself.
When you open the email, view the “original message” of the email. Your focus here is to view the header information, which includes all the DKIM authentication results.
Search the headers for “DKIM-signature” to find if the DKIM signature is applied to the message or not. If there are multiple DKIM-Signature headers, find the one which contains your domain. This DKIM signature contains an attribute “s=” which is the selector used.
Relationship between DKIM and DMARC
DMARC stands for “Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance.” It is an email authentication, policy, and reporting protocol that is built around both SPF and DKIM.
Now you might be wondering when DMARC uses both DKIM and SPF then why it is necessary. It ensures that when an email is received, the information received in both records matches the “friendly form” domain that the user actually sees and the form address that is contained in the message’s header. A DMARC record is created when you have both SPK and DKIM in place. Sometimes many domains don’t have SPF or DKIM set up, so the best way to go about it is through DMARC implementation tools. DMARC setup is similar to that of SPF as it is a simple one-line entry in the domain’s DNS records. It ties the DKIM and SPF protocols with a consistent set of policies.
Now, why do we need to use SPF, DKIM, and DMARC together?
The combination of these security protocols helps to combat the issue of Spam and Spear Phishing. Many networks are compromised because of these issues so the IT managers are looking for a better solution. Along with the increased rise in ransomware which often is preceded by spear-phishing emails, the enterprises are getting motivated towards protecting their email infrastructure.
Each of the elements- SPF, DKIM, and DMARC solves a somewhat different piece of the email puzzle to prevent phishing emails and spam. This is accomplished through a combination of standard authentication and encryption tools such as public and private key signing, and adding special DNS records to authenticate email coming from your domains.
Also, there has been significant evolution in the internet’s email protocols. Now emails are used by everyone to facilitate everyday communication. So when the email infrastructure implements all these protocols, it can be ensured that messages cannot be easily forged and you can block them from ever-darkening your users’ inboxes.
Conclusion
DKIM is an email authentication technology that has been around since 2005. It is a method of adding a tamper-proof seal to the emails and ensuring that the emails are protected and safe. DMARC combines the elements of DKIM and SPF and ensures a secured way to deal with spam and spear phishing.
ProDMARC is a user-friendly DMARC email protection solution that acts as your expert guide to help you move as quickly as possible to a reject policy. ProDMARC is a SaaS solution that enables organizations to handle complex DMARC deployments with ease. Across all email networks, the solution offers 360-degree visibility and governance.
Contact us for the best email authentication solutions.
On a laptop computer in the workplace, an IT expert is setting up a Document Management System (DMS). Archiving, finding, and managing business files and information with software.
A DNS txt record published in your public DNS is known as a DMARC record. This is a DMARC record, as indicated by the DMARC version tag. The receiver would be able to recognize this as your DMARC record if they query your public DNS.
The policy tag is the DMARC policy you set for DMARC emails that fail SPF and DKIM authentication; in other words, it’s the action you recommend to your email recipients when they receive emails that you haven’t approved as legitimate. Depending on the results of your DMARC report study, you can choose from three different policies.
The email address to which you want DMARC aggregate reports sent is the DMARC aggregate tag. These reports are usually sent to a DMARC analyzer for further review. They provide information about the origins of your emails as well as the results of your SPF and DKIM authentication on the email receivers’ end. This data is used to classify and authenticate all valid email sending sources.
ProDMARC assists you in quickly generating DMARC records. You can generate a sample DMARC record with ProDMARC. You configure DMARC by applying policies to your domain’s DNS records in the form of TXT records once SPF and DKIM are in place (just like with SPF or DKIM).
In this scenario, the sender defines the policy as such that the receiver outright rejects all non-aligned messages and sends a report about the rejections to a specific email address. If the sender were to use the “quarantine” setting in the policy, it would look like:
and would request the action to quarantine on the receiving end of the message. In the next example, if a message claims to be from your domain.com and fails DMARC, no action is taken. Instead, these messages will then show up in your daily aggregate report sent to
Only the v (version) and p (policy) tags are required. Three possible policy settings are available:
none – Take no action. Only log the affected messages in the daily report.
quarantine – Mark affected messages as spam.
reject – Cancel the message at the SMTP layer.
The study in which sender records are compared to SPF and DKIM signatures is known as DMARC alignment mode. There are two options for values: a relaxed “r” or a rigid “s.” Partial matches, such as subdomains, are allowed with some relaxation, whereas strict matches demand an exact match.
If you use the optional rua tag, make sure to include an email address where the regular updates will be sent.
3. Deploy your DMARC policy slowly
Since the DMARC specification recognizes that scaling out the deployment all at once can be difficult for certain organizations, there are some built-in methods for “throttling” the DMARC processing so that complete deployment can be achieved in stages over time.
The first step is to keep an eye on your traffic and reports. Assess the vulnerabilities (where messages are sent without being digitally signed or from invalid source IP addresses) and use SPF and DKIM records to address them.
As you become more comfortable with the findings from your regular aggregate reports, you will adjust the action on your policies to start quarantining. You can do this by using DMARC to change your TXT record to use the “quarantine” action. Keep an eye on your daily reports.
After you’ve been tracking your traffic and regular reports for a while and are certain that the sources seen sending traffic on behalf of your domain are all digitally signed, you can proceed to the next phase, which is modifying the policy to use the “reject” tag to completely deploy DMARC. Monitoring your reports and your spam feed is an essential part of maintenance for DMARC compliance.
It’s also worth noting that the pct tag, which is optional, can be used to sample your DMARC implementation in increments. Since 100% is the norm, setting “pct=20” in your DMARC TXT record causes one-fifth of all messages affected by the policy to receive the disposition rather than all of them. When you want to quarantine and reject mail, this setting is particularly useful. Start with a lower percent to begin with, and increase it every few days.
When you are ready to complete the DMARC setup, remove the percentages from your policies so that the full action of “quarantine” and “reject” is now functioning at 100%. As always, monitor your daily reports.
4. Use a user-friendly DMARC analyzing software
ProDMARC is a user-friendly DMARC email protection solution that acts as your expert guide to help you move as quickly as possible to a reject policy. ProDMARC is a SaaS solution that enables organizations to handle complex DMARC deployments with ease. Across all email networks, the solution offers 360-degree visibility and governance. Contact us for the best email authentication solutions.
Question mark. 3d abstract on dark background with dots and stars. Ask symbol. Help support, faq problem symbol, think education concept, confusion search illustration or background.Business man.
DMARC is the acronym for Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance.
It is a security practice in the world of email that allows people to determine which messages are from legitimate sources such as businesses, and which are from fraudsters seeking to take advantage of them.
DMARC is used by organizations in a number of industries for a variety of purposes that we will address later, but the overarching aim is to defend against spam and reduce cybercrime.
The definition of DMARC is not entirely new. Instead, it employs DKIM and/or SPF to conduct a more detailed review of each email received.
A domain owner may define its own authentication protocol with DMARC using a DMARC policy
The DMARC policy is used to signal to an incoming server what to do if a message fails the DMARC test. Finally, the policy will produce reports that detail each review to help enhance processes and provide early warning if the account is spam.
Let us take a look at how the other two methods for authenticating emails operate to get a better understanding of this process.
How does DMARC work?
The best way to understand DMARC is that it is a method of evaluating whether or not an email is authentic. Companies may use this standard to publish policies or regulations within their email system, causing messages that do not follow particular criteria to be discarded.
Anyone studying DMARC should be familiar with the acronyms SPF and DKIM, which stand for Sender Policy Framework and DomainKeys Defined Mail, respectively. Before DMARC can be implemented, each of these protocols must be defined.
SPF
The Sender Policy Framework is a process that allows you to accept messages sent on your behalf. Each email contains a communication between the recipient’s DNS server and the sender’s DNS server.
By introducing an SPF, your DNS will only be able to send messages from IP addresses that have been authorized (essentially, devices).
Emails from other IP addresses are blocked, so no one in another country can send messages on your behalf.
There are many tools available to help you set up an SPF. Although each domain provider will typically have its own set of rules to follow, ProDMARC’s version of the DMARC setup process is relatively simple.
DKIM
DKIM, on the other hand, is relatively straightforward to describe but substantially more difficult to implement than SPF.
Each email will be marked with an invisible stamp that works similarly to a signature on a letter. This information is stored in the header and decrypted by the recipient’s server, which enables it to authorize the sender based on what it knows about them.
Many tech experts also note the use of DKIM to ensure that an email has not been tampered with on the way to the recipient’s inbox, similar to how people line out blank spaces on checks to prevent further information from being added.
DKIM is a little difficult to set up. It requires the development of a public key (the system that enables a mail server to decrypt your signature) as well as a private key (which encrypts it, therefore hiding it from others).
Your domain provider should have instructions that will allow you to set up both.
Why should your organization use DMARC?
By now, you should have a clear idea of why it is important to have DMARC records associated with your messages. To drive home the point, we will go over each gain one by one, beginning with security.
DMARC’s reporting function means that receivers activated by DMARC can tell you:
Email Spoofing
There are several types of fraud, and email is arguably one of the worst-affected fields.
According to the Herjavec Group, cybercrime would cost the world $6 trillion by 2021; although it is difficult to predict how much of that would come from spoofing techniques, a simple glance through your junk mail can reveal how many people are trying to cheat you for financial benefit.
Of course, it is less about data breaches and network infiltrations that drill holes in the networks and steal money in this case. DMARC is used to check the company’s own identity, stopping actual consumers from communicating with people posing as you.
Damage To Your Brand’s Reputation
If one of your customers gives money or information to an imposter, the outcome will almost always be a negative experience.
DMARC is an extra security mechanism intended to keep out criminals who are becoming more innovative in their tactics.
That said, you should possibly say goodbye to any large orders from customers who were caught in the crossfire. They will be unsure of which senders they can trust, and even the mention of your brand can conjure up unpleasant memories.
Awareness
Many small businesses are unaware of how vulnerable they are to cybercriminals.
It is the same if you are a regular person with a small savings account. You should not want someone to steal your prize money because the criminals have bigger fish to fry.
Email authentication
If you send email messages that you think could be spoofed, you can inform recipients that if the SPF/DKIM checks fail, they can reject or quarantine the post. Rejection or DMARC quarantine is useful if you want your recipients to be 100% positive that an email from one of your receiving domains really came from you. This will ensure that your domains and brand are still trusted.
Feedback and reporting
There are two types of DMARC reports. Aggregate reports show you the email message header data as well as the recorded information, such as the message disposition, which indicates what the recipient did with the messages.The harassment reports that go through the email server Feedback Loops are close to forensic reports. They are modified versions of email messages that failed SPF, DKIM, or both. These are useful for finding any snags that may occur during the DMARC implementation.
Final Thoughts- Why is DMARC important?
We hope we have clarified the benefits of adopting a DMARC policy clearly, but cybersecurity professionals are taking their time to spread the word.
Although 47 percent of government domains have adopted this feature ahead of time, research reveals that just 0.5 percent of the world’s top one million domains have done so, despite the fact that 76 percent of email clients support it.
Worse still, according to research 77 percent of domains with a DMARC policy may not be sufficiently covered due to DMARC configuration issues.
It is important to set things up with the aid of an expert if you want to defend your organization from cybercrime.
ProDMARC is a convenient and secure DMARC email protection that has been specifically developed to meet the changing business needs of organizations. We provide 100 percent DMARC security by blocking phishing attempts, notifying you as soon as possible, and reducing false positives to 0%. As a consequence, the organization’s efficiency and deliverability will increase. Get Started with top-class cybersecurity solutions for your business at ProgIST.
