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What is DMARC Vulnerability?

DMARC records when configured in the right way can benefit you in more ways than one. It is a new realm in email security that offers domain owners a wealth of information about their email sending sources and performance. DMARC vulnerability refers to very common errors that users make while implementing the protocol or enforcing it. 

Vulnerabilities in your email authentication system can range from simple errors like wrong syntax to more complex errors. Either way, unless you troubleshoot these issues and set up your protocol correctly, it may invalidate your email security efforts. 

Before we analyze the possible vulnerabilities that you may encounter on your email authentication journey, let’s do a quick run-through of a few basic concepts. They are:

  1. What is email authentication?
  2. How does DMARC authenticate your emails?
  3. The impact of DMARC vulnerabilities on your message deliverability

What is Email Authentication?

Cybercriminals can extract financial benefits by intercepting email communications or using social engineering to defraud unsuspecting victims. 

Email authentication refers to specific verification systems domain owners can configure to establish the legitimacy of emails sent from their domain. This can be done by digital signatures placed in the message body, verification of Return-path addresses, and/or identifier alignment. 

Once the authentication checks confirm the legitimacy of the message, the email gets dropped into the receiver’s inbox. 

How does DMARC authenticate your emails?

When a company sends a message to its users, the email travels from the sending server to the receiving server to complete its deliverability journey. This email has a Mail From: header which is the visible header displaying the email address the email has been sent from and a Return-path header which is a hidden header containing the Return-path address.

An attacker can spoof the company domain to send emails from the same domain name, however, it is much more difficult for them to mask the Return-path address. 

Let’s take a look at this suspicious email:

While the email address associated with the message seems to be coming from [email protected] which feels genuine, on inspecting the Return-path address it can be quickly established that the bounce address is completely unrelated to company.com and was sent from an unknown domain. 

This bounce address (aka Return-path address) is used by email receiving servers to look up a sender’s SPF record while verifying DMARC. If the sender’s DNS contains the IP address that matches the IP of the sent email, SPF and subsequently DMARC passes for it, else it fails. Now according to the DMARC policy configured by the sending domain, the message may get rejected, quarantined, or delivered. 

Alternatively, DMARC may also check for DKIM identifier alignment to verify an email’s authenticity.

The impact of DMARC vulnerabilities on your message deliverability

The probability of your messages being delivered to your clients is hugely dependent on how accurately you have configured your protocol. Existing vulnerabilities in your organization’s email security posture can weaken the chances of your messages being delivered. 

Certain clear indications of loopholes in your DMARC authentication system are as follows:

  • Problems in email deliverability
  • Legitimate messages being marked as spam 
  • DMARC error prompts while using online tools 

Types of DMARC Vulnerabilities 

DMARC vulnerability #1: Syntactical errors in DNS records

A DMARC record is a TXT record with mechanisms separated by semicolons that specify certain instructions to email receiving MTAs. Given below is an example: 

v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:[email protected]; pct=100;

Small details such as the mechanism separators (;) play an important role in determining if your record is valid, and thus, cannot be overlooked. This is why to do away with the guesswork, we recommend that you use our free DMARC record generator tool to create an accurate TXT record for your domain.

DMARC vulnerability #2: No DMARC record found / DMARC record missing vulnerability

Domain owners may often come across a message while using online tools, prompting that their domain is missing a DMARC record. This can occur if you don’t have a valid record published on your DNS. 

DMARC helps you protect your domain and organization against a wide range of attacks including phishing and direct domain spoofing. Living in a digital world with threat actors trying to intercept email communications every step of the way, we need to exercise caution and implement preventive measures to stop these attacks. DMARC aids in that process to promote a safer email environment.

We have covered a detailed article on fixing the no DMARC record found vulnerability which you can refer to by clicking on the link.

DMARC vulnerability #3: Policy at none: monitoring only

A frequent misapprehension among users is that a DMARC policy at p=none is enough to protect their domain against attacks. In reality, only an enforced policy of reject/quarantine can help you build up your defenses against spoofing. 

A relaxed policy can however be fruitful if you only want to monitor your email channels, without enforcing protection. It is however recommended that you make a quick shift to p=reject once you are confident. 

We have placed this under the DMARC vulnerability category based on the criterion that most users implement DMARC to gain a higher degree of protection against attacks. Therefore, a policy with zero enforcement can be of no value to them.

DMARC vulnerability #4: DMARC policy not enabled

Similar to the previous vulnerability, this error prompt can often be a result of the lack of an enforced policy for DMARC. If you have set up your domain with a none policy, making it vulnerable to phishing attacks, it is a recommended practice to shift to p=reject/quarantine as soon as possible. To do so, you need only make a small tweak to your existing DNS record to modify and upgrade your policy mode. 

We have covered a detailed document on how to resolve the DMARC policy not enabled error which you can view by clicking on the link.

Troubleshooting DMARC vulnerabilities in real-time

To fix these issues you can consider implementing the following steps at your organization:

  1. Make a list of all your authorized email sending sources and configure a DMARC monitoring tool to track them daily or from time to time
  2. Have a discussion with your email vendors to substantiate whether they support email authentication practices
  3. Learn about SPF, DKIM, and DMARC in detail before you move on to the next steps.
  4. Make sure your SPF record is devoid of SPF Permerror by implementing an SPF flattening tool
  5. Make your protocol implementation process seamless with expert insights and guidance from DMARC specialists by signing up for a free DMARC analyzer. This can help you shift to p=reject safely with real-time vulnerability and attack detection.

Protecting your domain is one of the primitive steps towards preserving your reputation and upholding your credibility. Make email security a part of your security posture today!

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Using DMARC to Secure Your Inactive/Parked Domains

It is critical that any business using emails to communicate with their customers becomes DMARC compliant in order to protect the fidelity and privacy of their client’s information. However, a common mistake that organizations often end up making is securing their local/active domains, while completely ignoring the security of their parked domains.

DMARC is an email authentication protocol designed to prevent spammers from impersonating the senders of legitimate emails. Using DMARC provides real value. Not only is it an industry standard, but by implementing it you earn trust and respect from your customers, gain control of your domain from cybercriminals, and increase deliverability and message consistency.

What are Parked Domains?

Parked domains are webmaster-friendly aliases that streamline and promote your online presence. Basically, it refers to the practice of using an alternative domain name (i.e., parked) for advertising or administrative purposes. Parked domains are a great way to create additional brand equity for your business. While Parked Domains are domains that have been registered on purpose, they are not necessarily used to send emails or rank in search engines.

A parked domain is usually just an empty shell with no substance. Such domains often remain dormant and aren’t used for any interactive purposes like sending emails. Often purchased years ago, it is only natural for large enterprises that make use of several domains to carry out daily activities, to forget about them. So naturally, you might be thinking about whether securing your parked domains is even necessary in the first place? The answer is, yes! The low domain security of your inactive domains can make them an easier target for attackers. DMARC steps in to help you secure these parked domains, preventing them from being used for malicious ends.

How Can You Leverage DMARC to Secure Your Parked Domains?

In general, ISPs will treat domain names, especially parked domains, that lack a DMARC record with a low level of scrutiny. This means that these domains may not be protected well against spam and abuse. By skipping this step, you might be protecting your main domain with 100% DMARC enforcement with a policy of p=reject, all while remaining vulnerable on your parked domains. By setting up a set of DNS records for inactive domains, you can help prevent them from being used for phishing or malware distribution.

For every business owner out there, your company’s reputation should be of utmost importance to you. Therefore, when it comes to opting for email authentication, it should be for every domain you own. What’s even better is that implementing DMARC only requires you to publish a couple of records in your DNS.

However, before implementing DMARC you need to consider the following factors:

1) Make sure you have a valid and published SPF record on your DNS

For your inactive or parked domains, you only need a record that specifies that the particular domain is currently inactive and any email originating from it should be rejected. An empty SPF record with the following syntax does exactly that:

yourparkeddomain.com TXT v=spf1 -all

2) Be certain that you have a functional DKIM record published on your DNS

The best way to nullify DKIM selectors that were active in the past is to publish a DKIM record with (*) as your selector and an empty “p” mechanism. This specifies to MTAs that any selector for that parked domain is not valid anymore:

*._domainkey.yourparkeddomain.com TXT v=DKIM1; p=

3) Publish a DMARC record for your Parked Domains

In addition to publishing SPF, you should publish a DMARC record for your parked domains. A DMARC policy of “reject” for your inactive domains helps secure them. With DMARC you can also view and monitor fraudulent activities on these domains with reports you can view on our DMARC report analyzer dashboard.

You can configure the following DMARC record for your parked domains:

_dmarc.yourparkeddomain.com TXT “v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:[email protected]; ruf=mailto:[email protected]

 

Note: replace the sample RUA and RUF email addresses with valid email addresses (that don’t point to your parked domains) wherein you want to receive your DMARC reports. Alternatively, you can add your custom PowerDMARC RUA and RUF addresses to send your reports directly to your PowerDMARC account and view them on your DMARC report analyzer dashboard.

In case you have a large number of previously registered parked domains, you can configure the following CNAME record that points to a single domain, for all your parked domains:

_dmarc.yourparkeddomain.com  CNAME   _dmarc.parked.example.net

Once done, you can then publish a DMARC TXT record that points to the email addresses on which you want to receive your RUA and RUF reports, for that same domain on which you have configured DMARC for your parked domains:

_dmarc.parked.example.net TXT v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:[email protected]; ruf=mailto:[email protected]

To avoid implementing DMARC for your active and parked domains manually, help us help you automate the process and make it seamless for your organization with our proactive support team and an effective DMARC software solution. Sign up for your DMARC analyzer today!

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Why is Domain Name Security So Important for Today’s Businesses?

Domains have grown at an explosive rate over the last decade. With a decades-long history and the power to build trust, domains have long been the premier asset for businesses, online. Domain name security is a top concern for domain holders, and today’s online threats make managing domains more complex than ever. In the 1980s, the first top-level domains were established on the internet. Since then, there have been notable developments in domain name architecture, resulting in more security challenges and costs for businesses and consumers alike. Since their inception, domains have become a channel for cyberattacks and threats to online data and security. DMARC is a widely acclaimed protocol that protects your domain name and online assets from abuse and impersonation.

But before we get to that, here are three reasons why protecting your domain name should be your topmost priority starting today:

Your Domain is the Face of Your Company

Your domain is a reflection of your brand and is one of the most important online assets of your organization. The domain name is the digital address of your business and is an important part of your IP portfolio. It’s the first thing that potential customers and investors will see. Research shows that domains are now one of the most valuable elements of a company’s business, alongside intellectual property rights, easily identifiable assets, and shares. Domains are a vital part of any business’s IP portfolio, providing a long-term and authoritative presence on the Internet. It is essential to protect and renew them. Acquisition or abuse of domain names by cybercriminals can cause clients, customers, and partners to become inconsolable.

Domain Management is Not an Easy Task

Organizations now realize that their domain represents their business goals and creates that unified public face of the company that customers recognize when searching for products and services. As organizations become increasingly reliant on IP assets, domain management is likely to become more of a liability. The domains that are now the cornerstone of an organization’s security must be effectively managed, not just handled by internal IT teams. However, domain management poses its own set of security challenges. With the increasing number of domains each company owns, impersonating your organization for malicious ends becomes quite easy.

Did you know, 33% of organizations experienced cyberattacks specifically targeting their domain names in 2020?

Lack of Domain Name Security Increases the Risk of Domain Spoofing

Domain spoofing is a social engineering tactic, popular among cybercriminals of the digital age. A spoofed email domain accurately impersonates a valid domain and can be used to trick employees, customers, and partners who rely on your services. Spoofed domains are used to send fake emails to customers to perpetrate phishing attacks aimed at stealing sensitive data and bank details to launder money, or inject ransomware into their system. Suffice to say, it is extremely damaging to any business, both financially, as well as reputationally.

How to Secure Your Domain Name?

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) is a mechanism letting organizations protect their domain name from impersonation, domain abuse, and spoofing. It helps stop phishing (which is the leading cause of identity theft) by creating a 100% reliable mechanism for authenticating emails that are sent from your domain. It prevents unauthorized parties from setting up email accounts using a legitimate organization’s domain name. Configuring a DMARC analyzer at your organization can provide all-around protection to your domain name, helping you make sure that your reputation remains intact and your domain can never be used for malicious purposes.

Manage Your Domains Effectively with PowerDMARC DMARC Report Analyzer

With our DMARC report analyzer, you can manage your domains across a single pane of glass, read your DMARC reports, view authentication results, and pick up on malicious activities faster. It also allows you to adjust settings on the fly for immediate changes. Whether you are a small business or enterprise, a DMARC report analyzer gives you deeper control over how you manage email authentication.

Most importantly, it gives you a single place to manage the domains that you own from multiple registrars. Our intuitive interface provides a descriptive breakdown of each failure, helping you take action against them faster than ever before.

  • It provides a single, integrated solution for reading your DMARC reports
  • It provides the ability to quickly identify anomalies in your reports.
  • With report filtering options, this powerful module will allow you to better manage your domain’s health across multiple domains across various mail servers
  • Provides a clear view of the overall picture of how your emails are protected, bounce back messages, and what malicious activities are being attempted on your domain
  • Helps you save time by knowing the full picture with a reliable and clear dashboard that gives you a simple overview of your data
  • Highlights any errors in your SPF, DKIM, BIMI, MTA-STS record and TLS-RPT.

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Why Do We Need DMARC?

If you’ve been following the DMARC conversation in the industry, you probably have lots of questions. Why do we need DMARC? How does it help prevent domain spoofing? We are here to answer all of it. Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) is the technology that helps authenticate legitimate email and helps prevent spoofing. DMARC also provides insight into your email marketing efforts and stops your domain from being used by cyber-criminals. It allows email receivers to authenticate, report on and enforce policy around emails sent from domain names they don’t control.

DMARC is a vital defense against Domain spoofing, cyber-threats like phishing attacks as well as increasing transparency into the emails you send. DMARC improves your digital brand protection and the overall deliverability of your email marketing programs by differentiating legitimate emails from fraudulent ones.

Which Businesses Should Use DMARC?

The answer is quite simple. All. Irrespective of your company size or industry, in the current situation each and every organization needs information security and domain protection. Most businesses (knowingly or unknowingly) have already deployed SPF and DKIM to protect their email domains, but only an estimated one-third have actually implemented DMARC to stop spoofing. This is because of a lack of awareness of secure protocols and living in a state of constant denial, assuming that your domain is safe no matter what. That is until you fall prey to the next major email scam attack and lose a huge chunk of your subscribers and customers.

Another popular misconception is that DMARC is difficult to implement. Implementing DMARC for your domain, in reality, requires you to simply publish a DMARC record in your DNS with a one-line syntax. The difficult part is managing and monitoring your domains, especially if you have quite a few of them like every other business does. However, that too is manageable now! You can initiate your DMARC journey with our DMARC Analyzer, which is engineered to simplify your DMARC adoption process. We help you:

  • Generate and publish your DMARC records
  • Register your domains easily
  • Shift to an enforced policy within the least time
  • Gain 100% DMARC compliance on the total volume of emails sent from your domain

What’s in it for Your Business?

To answer the question “why do we need DMARC?” it is essential to isolate the several benefits it provides to growing businesses. Powered by DMARC, it means that your organization will be better protected from phishing and spoofing. DMARC prevents phishers from using your domain to spoof legitimate emails and trick your customers into handing over their usernames and passwords, credit card information, and other sensitive information. 90% of the organizations using DMARC have claimed to witness a boost in their email deliverability rate within a very short period of having implemented the protocol.

But that’s not all. While some emails you send to your followers may be determined as spam by their email providers, DMARC is a security feature that helps prevent this from happening. In addition to preventing the spoofing of your domain, DMARC allows you to ensure that your legitimate marketing emails have a higher chance of landing in your recipients’ inboxes. If not for the altruistic reasons of ensuring email delivery, implementing DMARC will definitely result in a better ROI on your email marketing campaigns, and improve your domain reputation.

Read Your DMARC Reports Easily with PowerDMARC

When you configure DMARC at your organization, you have the option of specifying to your receivers’ ESPs, to send you DMARC reports. These reports are crucial to monitor your email flow, gain visibility on failed deliveries and the status of each email’s authentication results.

But the raw reports are sent as XML files that are tough to read and understand. Our DMARC Report Analyzer is engineered to extract DMARC reports from your ESPs and assemble them across a single pane of glass. We parse the data for you, organize and manage them, and present them in a human-readable format that anyone can understand. We also allow you to download the data in a comprehensive PDF format to share with your employees.

Our interactive dashboard provides information on a higher level that can be read at a glance, as well as granular details on your sending sources so you can track malicious IP addresses faster.

Get your DMARC record checker today to analyze and improve loopholes in your domain’s security!

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DMARC: The First Line of Defense Against Ransomware

One of the largest focuses for email security in the last year has been around DMARC and ransomware has emerged as one of the most financially damaging cybercrimes of this year. Now what is DMARC? Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance as an email authentication protocol is used by domain owners of organizations big and small, to protect their domain from Business Email Compromise (BEC), direct domain spoofing, phishing attacks and other forms of email fraud.

DMARC helps you enjoy multiple benefits over time like a considerable boost in your email deliverability, and domain reputation. However a lesser known fact is that DMARC also serves as the first line of defense against Ransomware. Let’s enunciate how DMARC can protect against Ransomware and how ransomware can affect you.

What is Ransomware?

Ransomware is a type of malicious software (malware) that is installed on a computer, usually through the use of malware. The goal of the malicious code is to encrypt files on the computer, after which it typically demands payment in order to decrypt them.

Once the malware installation is in place, the criminal demands a ransom be paid by the victim to restore access to the data. It allows cybercriminals to encrypt sensitive data on computer systems, effectively protecting it from access. The cybercriminals then demand the victim pay a ransom sum to remove the encryption and restore access. Victims are typically faced with a message that tells them their documents, photos, and music files have been encrypted and to pay a ransom to allegedly “restore” the data. Typically, they ask the users to pay in Bitcoin and inform them how long they have to pay to avoid losing everything.

How Does Ransomware Work?

Ransomware has shown that poor security measures put companies at great risk. One of the most effective delivery mechanisms for ransomware is email phishing. Ransomware is often distributed through phishing. A common way this occurs is when an individual receives a malicious email that persuades them to open an attachment containing a file they should trust, like an invoice, that instead contains malware and begins the infection process.

The email will claim to be something official from a well-known company and contains an attachment pretending to be legitimate software, which is why it is very likely that unsuspecting customers, partners, or employees who are aware of your services would fall prey to them.

Security researchers have concluded that for an organization to become a target of phishing attacks with malicious links to malware downloads, the choice is ” opportunistic.” A lot of ransomware doesn’t have any external guidance as to who to target, and often the only thing guiding it is pure opportunity. This means, any organization whether it is a small business or a large enterprise, can be the next target if they have loopholes in their email security.

2021 recent security trends report have made the following distressing discoveries:

  • Since 2018, there has been a 350% rise in ransomware attacks making it one of the most popular attack vectors in recent time.
  • Cyber security experts believe there will be more ransomware attacks than ever in 2021.
  • More than 60% of all ransomware attacks in 2020 involved social actions, such as phishing.
  • New ransomware variants have increased by 46% in the last 2 years
  • 68,000 new ransomware Trojans for mobile have been detected
  • Security researchers have estimated that every 14 seconds a business falls victim to a ransomware attack

Does DMARC Protect Against Ransomware? DMARC and Ransomware

DMARC is the first line of defense against ransomware attacks. Since ransomware is usually delivered to victims in the form of malicious phishing emails from spoofed or forged company domains, DMARC helps protect your brand from being impersonated, which means such fake emails will be marked as spam or not get delivered when you have the protocol correctly configured.  DMARC and Ransomware: how does DMARC help?

  • DMARC authenticates your emails against SPF and DKIM authentication standards that helps filter malicious IP addresses, forgery and domain impersonation.
  • When a phishing email curated by an attacker with a malicious link to install ransomware arising from your domain name reaches a client/employee server, if you have
  • DMARC implemented the email is authenticated against SPF and DKIM.
  • The receiving server tries to verify the sending source and DKIM signature
  • The malicious email will fail verification checks and ultimately fail DMARC authentication due to domain misalignment
  • Now, if you have implemented DMARC at an enforced policy mode (p=reject/quarantine) the email after failing DMARC will either get marked as spam, or rejected, nullifying the chances of your receivers falling prey to the ransomware attack
  • Finally, evade additional SPF errors like too many DNS lookups, syntactical errors and implementation errors, to prevent your email authentication protocol from being invalidated
  • This ultimately safeguards your brand’s reputation, sensitive information and monetary assets

The first step to gaining protection against ransomware attacks is to sign up for DMARC analyzer today! We help you implement DMARC and shift to DMARC enforcement easily and in the least possible time. Start your email authentication journey today with DMARC.

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How to Publish a DMARC Record? Easy 3 step guide!

Learn how to Publish a DMARC record

Before we proceed towards publishing a DMARC record, it is important to understand what is a DMARC record? A DMARC record is nothing but a DNS TXT record that can be published in your domain’s DNS (Domain Naming System) so as to configure Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance or DMARC for your domain. By configuring DMARC for your domain you as the domain owner now have the ability to specify to receiving servers how they should respond to emails that are sent from unauthorized or illegitimate sources.

Instructions for Generating Your DMARC Record

The process for generating your DMARC DNS Record is extremely simple if you use our free DMARC record generator tool for this purpose. All you need to do is fill up the following criteria:

  • Choose your DMARC policy mode(if you are just starting out with email authentication, we recommend a policy of p=none for you to begin with so you can monitor your email flow)
  • Choose the DMARC policy mode for your subdomains ( we recommend you to only activate this criteria if you wish to opt for a different policy for your subdomains, else, by default it takes up the same policy as your main domain)
  • Type in your desired email addresses wherein you want your DMARC RUA (aggregate) and RUF (Forensic) reports to be delivered to
  • Choose your DKIM alignment mode (for strict alignment the DKIM signature in the email header has to match exactly with the domain found in the from header. For relaxed alignment the two domains must share the same organizational domain only)
  • Choose your SPF alignment mode (for strict alignment the domain in the Return-path header has to match exactly with the domain found in the from header. For relaxed alignment the two domains must share the same organizational domain only)
  • Choose your forensic options (this represents under which circumstances you want to receive your forensic reports)

A typical error-free DMARC record looks something like this:

v=DMARC1; p=none; sp=none; rua=mailto:[email protected]; ruf=mailto:[email protected]; fo=1;

The generated record is now to be published in your domain’s DNS on the subdomain: _dmarc.YOURDOMAIN.com

How to Publish Your DMARC Record? 

In order to publish your generated DMARC record, you will need to log in to your DNS console and navigate to the specific domain for which you want to configure DMARC.

After navigating to the domain in your DNS management console, you will need to specify the hostname and the resource type. Since DMARC exists in your domain as a DNS TXT record, the resource type for it is TXT, and the hostname to be specified in this case is : _dmarc 

Finally, you need to add the value of your DMARC record (the record you generated previously): v=DMARC1; p=none; sp=none; rua=mailto:[email protected]; ruf=mailto:[email protected]; fo=1;

Save changes to the whole process and you have successfully configured DMARC for your domain!

What Should be My Next Steps?

After you are done publishing your DMARC record your next step should be to focus on protecting your domain from scammers and impersonators. That is your main agenda anyway when you are implementing security protocols and email authentication services. Simply publishing a DMARC record with a p=none policy doesn’t offer any protection against domain spoofing attacks and email fraud. For that you need to shift to DMARC enforcement.

What is DMARC Enforcement?

You can achieve DMARC enforcement if you implement a DMARC policy mode of p=reject or p=quarantine. For maximum protection from domain spoofing attacks and BEC, we recommend a policy mode of reject.  However, the process for achieving DMARC enforcement isn’t as simple as changing your policy mode from monitoring to enforcement. To gain immunity from impersonation attacks all while making sure that your email deliverability doesn’t get impacted, what you need to do is:

  • Sign up with PowerDMARC and enable DMARC reporting for your domain
  • Get daily DMARC RUA reports on email authentication results available in an array of viewing options for ease of understanding
  • Get forensic report updates on the dashboard whenever emails fail authentication
  • Stay under the SPF hard limit to ensure your SPF record never gets invalidated

With DMARC aggregate and forensic reports, moving from monitoring to enforcement becomes a cakewalk for domain owners, as you can visually monitor your email flow and track and respond to deliverability issues instantaneously from the PowerDMARC platform. Sign up today for your free DMARC analyzer trial!

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