DMARC Security in 2024

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What is DMARC security? How does it protect your domain from being spoofed by phishing scam emails?

DMARC is an acronym for "Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance". It is a security and email authentication protocol that allows businesses to protect their domains from being spoofed by phishing scam emails. It is also used by email service providers and Internet service providers to detect and prevent fraud.

If you haven't heard of it, don't worry, it's actually pretty buy bulk sms service easy to understand. DMARC is an email authentication standard that helps you prevent spoofing, phishing, and other email-based attacks. What it does is allow you to define a policy for how your domain should handle emails with invalid sender addresses.

The first step to setting up DMARC is to register your domain with SPF so that you can control which IP addresses can send email on behalf of your company. You will also need to set up DKIM and start reporting email abuse through spam reporting or abuse reporting.

When an ISP receives an email with a DKIM record, they check the sender's domain against their own DNS records. If there is no SPF record, or if they don't match what they have on file, they reject the email as it could be spam or spoofed content from another source (like a phishing attack).

When used in conjunction with DMARC security, unauthorized emails can be blocked by senders before they reach customers.

With DKIM, a domain owner registers with a public key provider and publishes a public key in a DNS record. When an email is sent from an email server using DKIM, the sending server adds a signature to the message. The signature contains the sender's domain name (for example, "example.com") and a cryptographic hash of the message headers and body. The recipient uses this information to verify that the email has not been modified in transit.

DKIM alone does not protect against spoofing or phishing attacks, as it does not verify the sender's identity in any way. To address this issue and prevent spoofing, DMARC security is recommended.

We only want to give you the best advice for your domain as we head into 2024. For added protection, we recommend that you set up your domain with DKIM and SPF in conjunction with DMARC. If you are using an enforced DMARC policy, this will also help you receive any delivery failure reports that may occur.

By default, most email servers send a "pass" or "fail" verdict on incoming emails, but this can be easily fooled by spammers and phishers. DMARC allows you to verify the legitimacy of emails coming from your domain and specify how those messages should be handled if they fail validation or do not pass SPF and DKIM checks.

If you’re new to DMARC security, here’s how to get started. DMARC security can make you stand out from other organizations’ information security practices by improving domain reputation, reducing email unsubscribe rates, and better deliverability.

If you would like assistance on your DMARC security journey, contact SecurityGateway today!