There is a famous proverb, Communication is the key, and it also implies in business. Organizations must make their customers understand their services adequately. Thus, digital marketers use a popular technique of email marketing for brand awareness and lead generation.
We individuals also receive tons of emails every day. So, how do our email services differentiate between spamming and authentic emails? Here arrive the role of the terms SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. The fundamental task of these 3 techniques is to work together for email authentication, which makes it necessary to understand them. To know email authentication, it is required to understand these concepts.
In this article, we will provide you with a brief and insightful look at DMARC- which stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance.
What is DMARC?
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) is a broadly recognized email authentication policy and reporting protocol. It uses the results of its Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) validation methods, along with the sender domain’s DMARC policy to determine message disposition.
A DMARC policy is implemented in the sender’s DNS record and requires the sender’s affirmation to protect its email by SPF and DKIM validation, and executes to make sure that only authorized senders can send emails using the domain in the ‘From’ field of their email messages.
A reporting mechanism is also incorporated for DMARC results in which the receiver-end can report the domain, whether or not the received email qualified or failed authentication analysis. Simultaneously, the DMARC record of the domain owner can define the guidelines by what means a receiver can transmit the reports. With the assistance of these reports, the domain owner or DMARC vendor can determine the domain’s user of that email sender and use these data reports to modify the policy of their email authentication. This report information is also helpful to establish the policy that only allows trusted senders to send an email through that domain.
How Does DMARC Work?
DMARC consists of two existing technologies to authenticate email coming from your domain: SPF and DKIM.
An SPF record is issued to your DNS during the implementation of SPF for your domain, and it matches the sender IP address with the authorized IPs list of your SPF record when a recipient receives an email from your domain. If the email on the receiving server does not match the issued IP list of SPF records, that means the message has failed SPF.
In DKIM, a digital signature is attached to authorized emails, which can detect and stop an unauthorized sender from sending an email from your domain.
For an email to pass DMARC, it has to approve either SPF or DKIM authentication, and if an email cannot meet either of the two mechanisms, the server decides for the email according to your DMARC policy.
What is DMARC Policy?
In the DMARC Policy, email receivers can decide what to do with the received unauthorized email that can be a potential spoof. An email recipient can reject (blocking the sender) or quarantine (moving to a spam folder), or accept(opening, reading, or taking action) any emails from senders from non-authorized senders of your DMARC enforcement policy.
These three DMARC policies are defined as:
- (p=none) Monitor means that no action will be taken on the unauthorized sender and allows unqualified emails to reach the recipient side.
- (p=quarantine) Quarantine indicates that the unqualified emails arrive in the junk or spam folder of the receiver.
- (p=reject) Reject policy will block the unqualified emails from reaching the receiver.
A policy based on your choice can define how you want the receivers-end to handle emails that fail the DMARC authentication analysis. On receiving the DMARC record that comprises the reporting address, the domain owner can use the information delivered from email receivers to recognize the email sender using that domain.
What are the Uses of DMARC?
SPF and DKIM setup makes the DMARC incredibly robust policy. Therefore, you will need both SPF and DKIM if you want to implement DMARC.
Let’s take a look at why one should use DMARC policy:
- DMARC combines SPF and DKIM and provides maximum security instead of SPF and DKIM working separately and provides limited security to the domain.
- You receive reports that inform you what email is being sent using your email domain when you implement DMARC.
- You can take action against the senders trying to send spoofing receivers using your domain.
- You can also resolve any type of deliverability issues on your domain using such reports, as you can identify the exact source of the problem and be able to fix it immediately.
- Consequently, DMARC not only defends your domain but can also eliminate delivery issues and rectify security threats.
Conclusion
We all know how email is an essential communication service and takes care of your conversation with many potential customers. Thus, having someone send a spoofing email from your domain can not risk your partnership with your clients, also defile your brand image.
As a business is required to send commercial or transactional email, implementing DMARC service will be helpful to verify that an email is actually from you or your business and not from some malicious sender. A properly configured DMARC assists the email servers in determining and evaluating whether the email sent from your domain is indeed sent by you or not.
With the help of DMARC, you can protect your users, customers, employees, and cybercrime. You also get to defend your organization’s reputation from ruining because of cyber-attacks.
You get to differentiate the genuine and false use of your domains via DMARC reports, which will improve the trust of your customers in your emails. This process also helps your authentic emails to reach the user’s inbox successfully, which ultimately enhances the deliverability rate of your domain.
Hence, it will be a wise choice to implement DMARC standards to protect your email domain.
If you would like to learn how to protect your system from Cyber-attacks, then pursue the Cyber Security Courses by Krademy.
