Email has become a primary means of communication for businesses and individuals. Messages from your company or organization often contain confidential information such as customer data, financial records, intellectual property, etc., making them vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
To combat this problem, organizations are adopting DMARC to ensure their emails are protected against phishing attempts. Emails must be trustworthy and authentic, and DMARC comes into play.
Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting Conformance (DMARC) is an email authentication protocol. DMARC verifies email senders by building upon the DNS, DKIM, SPF, and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKI) protocols.
DMARC records make it easier for ISPs to prevent malicious email practices such as domain spoofing. To do so, they can simply check if an email was sent from a legitimate source.
It allows email senders to specify how to handle emails that were not authenticated using DMARC. Senders can either send those emails to the spam folder or block them altogether. By doing so, ISP can better identify spammers while minimizing false positives and providing better authentication reporting for greater market transparency.
DMARC requires DKIM or SPF to be present on an email domain and DMARC records to be published in the Domain Name System (DNS). The DMARC policy process allows the email domain’s policy to be shared and verified after the DKIM and Spf status has been checked.
An SPF, DKIM, and DMARC record requests email servers to deliver Extensible Markup Language(XML) reports to an email address associated with the domain. A DMARC checkers report provides information about how mail moves through a system and allows users to identify all traffic using their email domain.
A DMARC record allows domain owners to protect their domain names against spam. This is important because email is becoming increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks, such as phishing scams, email spoofing, and CEO fraud.
Moreover, phishing emails have caused people to lose email faith even though it continues to be one of the world’s most widely-utilized communication methods. DKIM and SPF filters have been in use for decades but didn’t give any way to prevent sending an email from someone who wasn’t authorized. This meant that domains couldn’t take full ownership of their brands, which led to the need for DMARC.
When strong security controls (such as spam filters) are deployed against fraudulent emails, delivery is simplified, brands are protected, and visibility is granted to those who own domains on how they’re being used online.
To prevent unauthorized access to your email domain, block any attempts at using your email address for fraudulent purposes.
Gain visibility into who is sending emails through your domain name.
Use the same modern technology that mega companies use to send out emails.
Make sure your emails are easily identifiable by recipients who use DMARC-capable mail servers.
A DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) record helps protect brands by ensuring that email messages from their domains are authentic. It can sometimes help improve a company’s reputation immediately.
Organizations and clients should be aware of phishing attempts. Phishing is a social engineering attack where users are tricked into disclosing personal information such as passwords, credit card numbers, and bank account details. To protect against phishing, organizations should implement DMARC policies. DMARC allows organizations to learn about their email channels and deploy and enforce a DMARC policy.
If the DMARC policies are set up correctly, they protect organizations from:
With DMARC Analyzers, organizations can gain full insight into their email channels. Because organizations previously could only gain insight into phishing attempts after they had occurred, gaining complete insight into their email channels was a big advantage of DMARCs. By implementing DMARCs, customers can be informed before an attempt occurs, so they can take appropriate measures to prevent such attacks.
In conclusion, DMARC helps organizations protect themselves from phishing, scamming, and other types of cybercrime. DMARC also provides visibility into what’s happening with their email channels. With this visibility comes the ability to make better decisions about their business.
