DMARC Compliance & Main DMARC Requirements Checklist

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance) provides email receivers and domain owners the ability to take policy-based actions against fraudulent emails. When an organizational domain complies with the DMARC protocol, it can prevent cyberattacks like email spoofing. The actions may include lodging the emails into the receiver’s spam folder for further review or even outright rejections of unauthorized emails.

Key Takeaways

DMARC compliance helps protect organizations from email spoofing and phishing attacks by enabling policy-based actions against fraudulent emails.
Achieving DMARC compliance ensures that only legitimate emails are delivered, while unauthorized messages are either rejected or quarantined.
DMARC compliance can improve email deliverability rates, as compliant emails are more likely to reach recipients’ inboxes.
Major industry players such as Google and Yahoo will require DMARC compliance for bulk email senders, making compliance an essential practice.
Regular monitoring of DMARC reports is vital for maintaining compliance and detecting unauthorized email senders effectively.

What is DMARC Compliance?

DMARC compliance means that an organization’s email domain is configured to align its SPF and/or DKIM authentication checks with its DMARC policy. This ensures that only legitimate emails are successfully delivered while unauthorized messages are rejected or quarantined.

The key benefits of achieving DMARC compliance are:

email-based attack protection
Increased visibility through reports
Reduced spam complaints on your domain

Simplify DMARC Compliance with PowerDMARC!

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The Importance of Achieving DMARC Compliance

A security survey by Deloitte confirms that 91% of data breaches in today’s world are a result of phishing attacks. Domain name abuse is a very common vector for spreading phishing emails. These emails reach your employees, partners, as well as customers! DMARC compliance plays a pivotal role in protecting your domain name from being abused.

“Our clients with DMARC-compliant emails have witnessed improvement in deliverability by almost 10%. They have also reported a significant reduction in domain abuse incidents. Verifiable metrics like these, reinstate the importance of DMARC compliance.”, says Cybersecurity Expert and CEO of PowerDMARC, Maitham Al Lawati.

Here are the key benefits of DMARC compliance:

1. Prevent Spoofing and Phishing Attacks

DMARC complaint emails minimize the risks of spoofing and phishing attacks. Compliance can protect your domain name against impersonation. According to a report by Global Cyber Alliance, organizations can save up to $302,000 per year by implementing DMARC.

2. Improve Mail Delivery Rates

Compliant emails are much more likely to end up in your client’s inbox than non-compliant ones. This is due to more and more email providers making DMARC compliance mandatory for email senders. This helps improve the deliverability of messages sent from authorized IP addresses.

DMARC Compliance Checklist

DMARC is now a mandatory requirement for the following industry compliances, and benefits:

1. PCI-DSS Recommendations

The PCI Security Standards Council has mentioned DMARC as a good practice under version 4. The council further encourages the need for organizations to implement anti-phishing controls to minimize impersonation threats

2. Google & Yahoo’s Email Sender Requirements

If you are a bulk message sender, which most organizations are, you need DMARC compliance now! Starting from Feb 2024, Google and Yahoo would require bulk message senders to send DMARC-compliant emails to their users. This is an attempt at promoting a less spammy inbox, and safer communications.

3. Gmail’s Blue Verified Checkmark

Who wouldn’t like to get a verification checkmark every time they send an email? For all domains that have achieved DMARC compliance, and have BIMI activated, Gmail attaches a blue tick to display trust in the source.

Read more about Gmail’s verified blue checkmark.

Check if Your Domain is DMARC Compliant

It is crucial to conduct a DMARC compliance check to ensure that your emails have DMARC enabled properly. More often than not, domain owners make errors while configuring the protocol, leading to compliance issues. At PowerDMARC, we provide a few ways for you to check your compliance when you sign up for free:

Option 1: Use our PowerAnalyzer tool

You can enter your domain name in PowerAnalyzer to get started. Analyze your DMARC, SPF, and DKIM compliances in seconds with a detailed report! What’s better, you also get a domain security score!

Option 2: Use our Free DMARC checker tool

You can check DMARC compliance instantly with our DMARC checker tool. You can examine the status of your record’s validity, and troubleshoot errors faster!

Requirements for DMARC Compliance

DMARC Compliance requires an email to authenticate and align against the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and/or DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). An email is determined to be DMARC compliant if it aligns with either or both of these authentication standards. Here are a few prerequisites to achieving DMARC compliance for your outbound emails:

Enable SPF with a list of authorized senders for your domain
Or, configure your DKIM signature to set DKIM alignment for your emails

To configure these protocols, you can either do so manually or use an automated tool to generate your DNS records. Here are some our the tools that you can use:

Meet DMARC Compliance and Requirements

To send DMARC-compliant emails that easily pass deliverability checks, follow the steps given below:

1. Create your DMARC DNS record

Once SPF or DKIM is set up, use the setup wizard on our dashboard to create your DMARC record. It’s an easy 3-step process. You just enter the domain you want to manage, create your record, and publish it on your DNS.

2. Set a DMARC Policy

When you create your record for DMARC, it is mandatory to choose a DMARC compliance policy. You can choose one of 3 policy modes.

Choose “none” for no action against unauthorized emails
Choose “quarantine” to lodge bad emails in the quarantine folder
Choose “reject” to stop unauthenticated emails from getting delivered

You can enable a different policy for your subdomains as well. Beware that your subdomain policy will override the policy of your root domain for all subdomains.

3. Publish the DMARC Record

You must publish the created record in your DNS, to activate the protocol. Your DNS may take some time to propagate and implement the changes.

And that’s it – your unauthenticated messages will now be DMARC compliant!

Best Practices to Stay DMARC Compliant

In order to stay DMARC compliant, you can consider the following:

Policy enforcement: A DMARC enforcement policy of p=reject is what you should go for to prevent spoofing.
Subdomain management: Make sure your subdomains are properly protected with DMARC policies, to prevent misuse.
Third-party sender authentication: Your third-party email vendors need to be authorized to send emails on your behalf and must support email authentication.
Continuous monitoring: Review your DMARC reports from time to time to ensure your email deliverability is not impacted, and detect unauthorized senders.

Achieve DMARC Compliance In 10 Days or Less with PowerDMARC

PowerDMARC empowers your organization with a well-rounded DMARC-based authentication tool. It incorporates SPF and DKIM records to ensure email security by making your domain DMARC compliant. The services further extend to include DMARC monitoring, reporting, and domain security features.

Our Unique Features

Multi-Protocol Multi-Lingual Control Panel

PowerDMARC’s SaaS-based multilayered approach to email security includes a DMARC analyzer tool. We provide several protocols that go beyond the scope of just DMARC. Our platform also supports 11 different language versions for inclusivity. We enhance the safety of your emails, making sure all emails sent with your domain name are genuine.

DMARC Compliance Monitoring

Enable Real-time DMARC compliance monitoring in an organized and comprehensive dashboard. We mark the percentage of emails that are DMARC compliant, demarcating the ones that align with SPF and DKIM. The top 5 IP addresses that pose the biggest threat to your email domain are also highlighted.

Simplified DMARC Compliance Reporting

PowerDMARC enables you to receive aggregate reports and encrypted forensic RUF reports. You gain better visibility into the emails that are failing verification, at which stage, and why. Aggregate reports can be filtered into 7 different human-readable and simplified viewing formats. Each view separately highlights your sending sources, reporting organizations, IP addresses, Geolocations, etc!

AI and Alerts

AI-driven threat intelligence maps out and helps you visualize the geo-locations of operation of the abusers of your domain name and their history of domain abuse, while custom email alerts sent to your address help you stay on top of every incident or attack on your domain name.

Error-Free SPF Hosted Services

Don’t let SPF issues hold you back on your compliance journey. Hosted SPF enables your SPF record to stay under the 10 DNS lookup limit by eradicating “permerror” with advanced SPF Macros integration – best equipped to handle complex email authentication setups and infrastructures with ease and prevent authentication failures.

Cast Studies

Advantage

Learn how Advantage NZ helped clients achieve DMARC compliance with exceptional accuracy by joining hands with PowerDMARC.

ADI Cyber Services

Learn how ADI Cyber Services helped clients simplify email authentication management and monitoring to easily comply with the latest industry mandates, by partnering with PowerDMARC.

DMARC Compliance FAQs

How to support unlimited subdomains and maintain DMARC compliance?

Supporting unlimited subdomains to maintain DMARC compliance can be challenging. We recommend:

Using a wildcard DMARC record entry for your subdomains
Implement strict SPF and DKIM alignment
Monitor your DMARC reports regularly
Implement a DMARC sp (subdomain) policy
Enforce your DMARC policies gradually
Finally, use a centralized email authentication management service like PowerDMARC

Do the non-compliant messages drop off?

Whether your non-compliant messages will be dropped off depends on your DMARC policy. If you have set DMARC to “none”, non-compliant messages will still be delivered. However, at “quarantine” and “reject” non-compliant messages will be placed in the quarantine folder or rejected, respectively.

What happens if there is no DMARC?

Without DMARC, your domain is at a higher risk of spoofing and domain name impersonation. Moreover, you cannot add visual marks in Gmail inboxes with BIMI, without DMARC. DMARC compliance is also an email sender mandate for Gmail bulk senders. Hence, non-compliance may lead to email delivery issues.

How Long Does It Take to Become DMARC Compliant?

When done manually, achieving 100% DMARC compliance may take several months. However, using a reliable service provider like PowerDMARC ensures it can be achieved at the fastest market pace without getting negatively impacted by the transition. The time taken for you to achieve compliance ultimately depends on your expertise in configuring the protocol, the efficiency and support provided by your DMARC management service provider, and your monitoring capabilities.

Is DMARC Compliance Required by Law?

Several countries, including UK, Canada and Denmark have made DMARC compliance mandatory for government departments. From 2025, the payment card industry is also making DMARC mandatory for organizations handling payment card information.

What is the Difference Between DMARC Compliance and DMARC Enforcement?

DMARC Compliance means that your email domain is set up to align SPF and/or DKIM with your DMARC policy to authenticate emails, helping prevent unauthorized use.

DMARC Enforcement refers to setting your DMARC policy to ‘quarantine’ or ‘reject,’ ensuring that emails failing authentication are blocked or sent to spam.

Is Gmail DMARC compliant?

It is possible to enable a Gmail DMARC record. Gmail supports and encourages the implementation of DMARC, SPF, and DKIM for outgoing emails. This can improve your organization’s email security.

Does Outlook use DMARC?

Outlook does use and implement DMARC, along with other email authentication protocols like SPF and DKIM. DMARC instructs email providers like Outlook on how to handle messages that fail authentication.

Our Content Review and Fact-Checking Process

This article has been written by a Cybersecurity Expert. We have outlined practical strategies we implement in real time to help our customers achieve DMARC compliance.

About
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Maitham Al Lawati

Cybersecurity Expert, CEO at PowerDMARC

Maitham is a tech entrepreneur, cybersecurity expert, CEO and Founder of PowerDMARC with 15+ years of industry experience. Maitham holds a Global MBA from the University of Manchester and various professional certifications including CISSP, CISM, CRISC, and ISC2 CCSP.

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