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Tag Archive for: DMARC

How to Find the Best DMARC Solution Provider for Your Business?

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Choosing the best DMARC software solution for your online business can be a challenging task. To be recognized as the best DMARC solution in the market, it needs to be a robust and reliable framework for your organization, providing you with a high ROI with noticeable improvements in your email security infrastructure.

DMARC Solutions for Email Fraud Prevention

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance is a widely recognized, recommended, and supported email authentication protocol in recent times. A DMARC solution can help small businesses, as well as multinational enterprises, mitigate impersonation, email spoofing attacks, Business Email Compromise, and fraudulent emails with an automated and effortless approach toward protocol implementation, management, and monitoring.

DMARC uses two of the standard protocols in the arena of email authentication, namely SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail). DMARC solutions can help validate emails sent from business domains for authenticity and empower organizations to track, detect, and mitigate email-based attacks and security breaches by providing advanced monitoring features and analytics.

When selecting the best DMARC software solution for your business, you need to look for a few basic and advanced features that the solution must include!

The Benefits of Investing in a DMARC Software Solution

Investing in a good DMARC solution designed by a trusted company can be extremely rewarding from a security standpoint. Continuous attacks on your domain name can with time weaken your brand reputation and email’s credibility, leading you to lose both customers and financial assets. 

Short-term benefits of a DMARC solution: 

  • Enhanced insight into domain and email activity with detailed reporting 
  • Protection against malicious emails, email phishing, domain spoofing, email impersonation, and email fraud.
  • A highly scalable platform built to secure hundreds of domains

Long-term benefits: 

  • Improved email delivery rate
  • Improved email reputation
  • Retained brand trust and customers

Top DMARC Solution Features to Look Out For 

When looking for a suitable DMARC software solution for your business, here are the top features you should consider:

1. A User-Friendly Cloud-Native Dashboard

A user-friendly and intuitive dashboard, that is also cloud-native is a primary feature to look for when choosing a good DMARC solution. This will offer you complete visibility into your email ecosystem, with services that are highly scalable and compatible with your existing email security setup – without causing any disruption in your mail flows.

2. Simplified Aggregate Reporting and Encrypted Forensics

It is indispensable that your DMARC solution has an extensive reporting mechanism. Aggregate and Forensic reports are both imperative to monitor threats and configure authentication protocols.

Detailed DMARC aggregate reports are generated in an XML file format. To a non-technical person, these reports may appear hard to decipher. The best DMARC software solution for your organization will convert these incomprehensible aggregate reports from complex XML files into information you can easily understand that allows you to analyze your results and make the needed changes.

best dmarc software

Forensic reports provide valuable insight into your email domain’s vulnerabilities, which are generated every time an email sent from your domain fails DMARC. They dispense detailed information about individual emails that failed authentication to detect spoofing attempts at a speedy pace.

In some cases, Forensic reports might potentially include confidential information. This is why when selecting the best DMARC software solution for your business, you should choose a service provider that values your privacy and lets you encrypt the reports so that only authorized users have access to them.

4. Advanced Monitoring Services 

To achieve 100% DMARC compliance on your emails you need an advanced monitoring service integrated into your DMARC solution that is easy to set up and use. The solution must highlight your sending sources, domains, IP addresses, and domain activities effectively on an interactive dashboard, along with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC alignment results. Customized alerts sent to your email address whenever there is a reason for concern, is an added advantage to look out for. 

Monitoring your email authentication with the help of a DMARC solution ensures that your legitimate emails don’t get rejected by your recipient’s mail servers and also helps mitigate authentication issues faster. Insights can help prevent major data breaches and phishing attacks by equipping you with the information you need to stay vigilant and protected. 

5. Optimized SPF Management 

SPF DNS records have a limit of 10 DNS lookups. If your organization has a wide base of operations or you rely on third-party email service providers to send emails on your behalf, your SPF record could easily exceed the DNS lookup limit and return permerror.

This invalidates your SPF implementation and makes your emails inevitably fail SPF. This is why you should search for a solution that helps you instantly optimize your SPF record and mitigate SPF errors!

6. An Interactive and Efficient Setup Wizard

when choosing the best DMARC software solution for your organization, one should not forget the setup process. An interactive and efficient setup wizard that is designed with simplicity and ease of use in mind, taking you through the process of entering your domain name to setting your DMARC policy to generating your own DMARC record in a synchronized and methodical way, is the need of the hour! It will help you get settled down seamlessly, and understand all the settings and functionalities on your dashboard within the least possible time.

7. Scheduling Executive PDF Reports

dmarc solution

With an effective DMARC solution for your organization, you can convert your DMARC reports into convenient PDF easily readable documents that can be shared with your whole team. Depending on your needs, you can have them scheduled to be sent to your email regularly or simply generate them on demand.

8. Hosted Email Authentication Software Solutions

Hosted email security features that perfectly authenticate email traffic to verify the legitimacy of emails and identify even sophisticated email threats, are the need of the hour. This should include hosted DMARC, SPF, DKIM, BIMI, MTA-STS, and TLS-RPT. An efficient DMARC software solutions provider can hook you up with the latest technologies concerning protocol implementation which can work in unison to enhance your brand recall and uphold your reputation and integrity.

10. AI and Threat Intelligence

For enhanced visibility and insight, what you need is an AI-driven Threat Intelligence (TI) engine that actively roots out suspicious IP addresses, checking them against a live, updated blacklist of known abusers so you can have them taken down. This will armor you against malicious activities and repeated occurrences of domain abuse in the future.

11. A Proactive Support Team

When implementing DMARC at your organization and generating aggregate reports, what you need is a proactive team of experts and specialists, available round-the-clock to help you mitigate issues in configuration even after onboarding, throughout the time you are availing of their services.

The Best DMARC Software in the market: PowerDMARC

PowerDMARC is recognized by more than 1000 customers and 600 channel partners as a top DMARC solution. It is a single platform that is effective enough to help you shift from monitoring to DMARC enforcement and gain 100% DMARC compliance on your monthly email volume in the least amount of time. Our advanced DMARC software solution will aid you in configuring your domain, DMARC policy, and aggregate reports and help you gain complete visibility into your email ecosystem at the earliest. 

PowerDMARC is your one-stop destination for the ultimate email security suite, and here’s why: 

  1. Detailed yet simple reporting services to scale reporting for even enterprise-level organizations operating multiple domains and thousands of emails per day, along with advanced report analysis with DMARC report analyzer
  2. 360-degree visibility into your email network, email validation services, unauthorized senders, legitimate sources, and more
  3. Encrypted Forensic Reporting
  4. Email authentication monitoring tools designed to detect and prevent fraudulent activities on your own domains 
  5. World-class automation tools for your domain’s security including a record setup wizard, making it effortless to configure and manage your email’s authentication
  6. Cloud-based platform designed to support unlimited users and message volume for larger organizations, as well as SMEs
  7. Address deliverability issues at the sender level
  8. Pay-as-you-go system with no hidden additional costs
  9. Send compliant emails to potential customers and improve email deliverability
  10. Free trial available with access to all features for 15 full days 

When choosing a DMARC solution for your organization, it is important to confide in a service provider who offers premium technology at reasonable rates. Sign up to get your hosted DMARC trial today with PowerDMARC!

best dmarc software

November 8, 2023/by Ahona Rudra

How to Fix “No DMARC Record Found”?

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“No DMARC record found”, or simply “no DMARC found” are all errors you may come across if your domain is missing DMARC record. Fixing this error may be as simple as having a DMARC record published on your domain’s DNS. 

Similar variations of the same error may be as follows: 

  • No DMARC record 
  • No DMARC record found 
  • DMARC record is missing
  • No DMARC found
  • Domain missing DMARC record 
  • DMARC record not found 
  • No DMARC record published 
  • DMARC policy not enabled
  • Unable to find DMARC record

DMARC and its role in email security

DMARC is an internet protocol that helps authenticate emails and plays a significant role in the protection of domains against impersonation. DMARC assumes popular authentication protocols – SPF and DKIM, and builds on them to validate messages sent from a domain.

Why is it Important to Fix “No DMARC Found” Error?

It is important to fix the “No DMARC Found” error since email is the easiest way cybercriminals can abuse your brand name, and email authentication is a primary defense mechanism to prevent such email fraud and brand impersonation attempts.

By using your domain and impersonating your brand, hackers can send malicious phishing emails to your own employees and customers. Since SMTP is not retrofitted with secure protocols against fake “From” fields, an attacker can forge email headers to send fraudulent emails from your domain. Not only will this compromise security in your organization, but it will seriously harm your brand reputation.

Email spoofing can lead to BEC (Business Email Compromise), loss of valuable company information, unauthorized access to confidential data, financial loss and reflect poorly on your brand’s image. Even after implementing SPF and DKIM for your domain, you cannot prevent cybercriminals from impersonating your domain. 

This is why you need an email authentication protocol like DMARC, which authenticates emails using both the mentioned protocols and specifies to receiving servers of your clients, employees, and partners how to respond if an email is from an unauthorized source and fails authentication checks. This gives you maximum protection against exact-domain attacks and helps you be in complete control of your company’s domain.

Furthermore, with the help of an effective email authentication standard like DMARC, you can improve your email delivery rate, reach, and trust. All this makes it increasingly important to fix the “No DMARC record found” error. 

Start Protecting Your Domain

5 Steps to Fix “No DMARC Record Found” Error

On encountering the “no DMARC record found” error you can get your DMARC record generated by using an online DMARC record generator tool like the one provided by PowerDMARC. 

Step 1: Visit our homepage to sign up for free

Visit our homepage to sign up for free

Step 2: Click on PowerToolbox in portal menu

Click on PowerToolbox in portal menu

Step 3: Select DMARC record generator

Select DMARC record generator

Step 4: Choose Your DMARC Policy

Choose Your DMARC Policy

How to determine your DMARC enforcement policy?

To determine which DMARC policy mode you should choose for the policy parameter (p), you can refer to the table below: 

Zero enforcement/monitoring only p=none
Review unauthorized emails in the spam folder p=quarantine
Discard/Not deliver emails that fail DMARC p=reject

Step 5: Click Generate

Click Generate

Step 6: Add DMARC Record 

Add DMARC Record

Access your DNS advanced editor in your DNS management console to publish the missing DMARC record, like in the example shown below:

Note: Make sure you have either SPF or DKIM enabled for your messages before you enable DMARC authentication, to get rid of the “no DMARC found” error.

Is Adding The Missing DMARC Record Enough?

It can be annoying and confusing to come across prompts saying “Hostname returned a missing or invalid DMARC record” when checking for a domain’s DMARC record while using online tools.

Once you have successfully resolved the “No DMARC record found” prompt and your domain is now configured with DMARC authentication, your work doesn’t end there. Fixing the “No DMARC record found” issue simply isn’t enough to protect your domain against spoofing and phishing attacks or to make sure that this error won’t reoccur. Monitoring your domain and emails is a must! 

I’ve fixed the “No DMARC record found” error, what’s next?

Once you have fixed the “no DMARC record found” error on your domain, it is important to make sure your published record is valid.

  • Check your DMARC record with a DMARC record checker tool. It’s free!
  • DMARC makes use of SPF and/or DKIM identifiers to verify the authority of sending domains. Make sure you have a valid and published SPF/DKIM record for your domain. Check it here.
  • Monitor your domains and authentication results from time to time to track your email deliverability.

Implement DMARC the Right Way with PowerDMARC

PowerDMARC helps your organization achieve 100% DMARC Compliance by aligning authentication standards, and helps you shift from monitoring to enforcement in no time, resolving the “no DMARC record found” prompt in no time! Furthermore, our interactive and user-friendly DMARC analyzer dashboard automatically generates:

  • Aggregate Reports (RUA) for all your registered domains, which are simplified and converted into readable tables and charts from complex XML file format for your understanding.
  • Forensic reports (RUF) with encryption

Enable Reporting for DMARC

Why PowerDMARC?

PowerDMARC is a single email authentication SaaS platform that combines all email authentication best practices such as DMARC, SPF, DKIM, BIMI, MTA-STS, and TLS-RPT, under the same roof. We provide optimal visibility into your email ecosystem with the help of our detailed aggregate reports and help you automatically update changes to your dashboard without you having to update your DNS manually.

We tailor solutions to your domain and handle everything for you completely in the background, all the way from configuration to setup to monitoring. We help you implement DMARC correctly to help keep impersonation attacks at bay!

Hope we helped you fix the “No DMARC record found” error! Sign up with PowerDMARC to get a free DMARC trial for your domain today!

best dmarc software

April 13, 2023/by Ahona Rudra

DMARC: What is it and How does it Work?

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Email authentication is foundational in maintaining trust and security in digital communications. It serves as a crucial line of defense against phishing, email spoofing, and other cyber threats that exploit the trust users place in email communications. 

Email fraud and phishing pose significant challenges in the way of business email communications. Cybercriminals utilize sophisticated techniques to craft deceptive emails that appear genuine, luring recipients into revealing sensitive information, such as login credentials, financial data, or personal details. This highlights the need for email authentication techniques like DMARC. 

What is DMARC in Email?

DMARC is an email authentication protocol that allows email domain owners to specify which mechanisms they use to authenticate their email messages and how mail servers receiving messages from their domain should handle authentication failures.

DMARC is intended to help combat email fraud and phishing attacks by allowing email recipients to determine whether or not an email message claiming to come from a specific domain is actually from that domain. It functions by allowing domain owners to publish policies that instruct receiving email servers on how to handle messages that fail authentication checks.

DMARC Full Form

DMARC stands for “Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance”.

Here’s a breakdown of the various components of “DMARC” acronym:

Domain-based: DMARC runs at the domain level, allowing domain owners to specify policies for email authentication and processing.

Message Authentication: DMARC allows domain owners to designate the authentication procedures used to validate incoming email messages, such as SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail).

Reporting: DMARC creates thorough reports that provide insights into email authentication outcomes, including successful and failed authentication efforts, as well as information about the messages’ sources.

Conformance: Domain owners can use DMARC to describe the actions that receiving mail servers should do when an email fails authentication tests, ensuring that the established policies are followed.

How does DMARC Work?

A message is sent from an authorized server to the DMARC-compliant domain’s SPF record and/or DKIM signature, which are stored at the DNS level. 

If either check passes, the message is termed as “DMARC PASS”; if both fail, the message fails DMARC (since it didn’t meet SPF or DKIM requirements).

Depending on the DMARC policy configured, the message can now be rejected or discarded, flagged as spam or quarantined, or delivered as is. 

Once you’ve set up DMARC correctly for your domain, you can enable DMARC reports. This helps you identify suspicious messages so you can take action against them quickly—and keep your subscribers safe!

Why is DMARC Important?

  • DMARC ensures Email Authentication

DMARC is a powerful email authentication protocol that helps protect domains from email fraud and abuse.

  • DMARC protects from Domain Spoofing

DMARC is an essential tool in protecting domains from spoofing attacks, which are a type of email-based fraud in which an attacker sends emails that appear to come from a trusted domain.

  • DMARC protects against phishing attacks

DMARC is a powerful tool in the fight against phishing attacks, which are a type of email-based scam that attempts to trick users into divulging sensitive information or performing malicious actions. 

Benefits of DMARC

DMARC benefits a company/ business by putting in place an authentication mechanism that gives domain owners the power to not only set policies for emails that fail authentication, but also report back to the sender regarding those failures.

Here are some of the benefits of implementing DMARC:

  1. Email Fraud Prevention: You can prevent phishing attacks by using DMARC to identify spoofed emails and prevent them from being delivered to user inboxes.
  2. Improves Brand Reputation: You can improve your brand reputation by ensuring that only legitimate messages are delivered to recipients’ inboxes.
  3. Minimizes Spam: You can reduce the amount of spam in your customer’s inboxes by preventing fraudulent messages from reaching them in the first place.
  4. Provides Visibility: Quickly identify who is sending emails on your behalf without your knowledge using DMARC reports.
  5. Improves Deliverability: You can improve your email’s deliverability rate by 10% over time by deploying the protocol correctly for your emails.

How to Set Up and Enable DMARC?

Setting up DMARC can be a bit technical and we have covered it in detail in our DMARC setup guide. Here are the general steps involved: 

1. Assess your email-sending infrastructure

Before setting up DMARC, you need to have a good understanding of your email-sending infrastructure. This includes identifying all the email servers and third-party services that send emails on your behalf, such as marketing automation platforms, customer service tools, and email delivery services.

2. Create a DMARC policy

DMARC-Policy

A DMARC policy tells email receivers how to handle messages that fail DMARC checks. You need to create a DMARC policy for each domain you want to protect. The policy will include the following elements:

  • Policy mode: You can choose between two policy modes – “none” and “quarantine” or “reject”. “None” means that the receiver will continue to accept and deliver messages that fail DMARC checks. “Quarantine” or “reject” means that the receiver will send those messages to the spam or junk folder, or even reject them outright.
  • Alignment requirements: You can specify the alignment requirements for your domain’s SPF and DKIM records. This means that the domain name in the “From” header of an email must match the domain name in the SPF and/or DKIM record.
  • Reporting: You can configure DMARC to send reports to your email address or a third-party service. These reports will provide information on DMARC activity, including the number of emails sent, the number of emails that passed DMARC checks, and the number of emails that failed DMARC

3. Create and Publish a DMARC TXT record

You can sign-up with PowerDMARC for free to create your DMARC record using our DMARC record generator tool. Following this, you need to access your DNS management console to publish your record or take the help of your DNS hosting provider to publish it on your behalf.

What does DMARC Look Like?

The structure of a DMARC record is defined in the DNS (Domain Name System) as a TXT record associated with the domain. It contains several tags that specify the DMARC policy and reporting options. Here’s an example of what a DMARC record might look like:

_dmarc.example.com.     IN TXT    “v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:[email protected]; ruf=mailto:[email protected]; sp=reject”

In this example:

  • “_dmarc.example.com.” refers to the specific domain where the DMARC record is being set up. In this case, it is “example.com.”
  • “IN TXT” indicates the record type as a text record.
  • “v=DMARC1” signifies that the version of DMARC being used is DMARC version 1.
  • “p=reject” sets the DMARC policy to “reject,” which instructs receiving email servers to reject or discard emails that fail DMARC authentication checks.
  • “rua=mailto:[email protected]” specifies the email address “[email protected]” as the destination to receive aggregate DMARC reports, which provide information about email authentication results.
  • “ruf=mailto:[email protected]” designates the email address “[email protected]” as the destination to receive forensic DMARC reports, which provide detailed information about individual failed email authentication events.
  • “sp=reject” sets the subdomain policy to “reject,” ensuring that the DMARC policy applies to subdomains as well.

DMARC, SPF and DKIM – Pillars of Email Authentication

SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is an authentication protocol that defines which mail servers are authorized to send emails on behalf of a specific domain. By creating SPF records in the domain’s DNS, the owner specifies the allowed IP addresses or domains that are permitted to send emails using that domain.

DKIM is an email authentication protocol that allows the sender of an email to digitally sign the message with an encrypted signature, which is associated with the sender’s domain. The receiving email server can then verify the authenticity of the message by checking the DKIM signature against the corresponding public key in the sender’s DNS records. 

Combining DMARC, SPF and DKIM Against Email Fraud

When it comes to email authentication, implementing DMARC, SPF, and DKIM together provides a robust defense against email spoofing and phishing attacks. Let’s explore the benefits of using these authentication methods in combination:

Comprehensive Protection: The combination of DMARC, SPF, and DKIM provides a layered approach to email authentication, offering comprehensive protection against email spoofing, phishing, and unauthorized senders.

Enhanced Email Deliverability: By ensuring that emails are properly authenticated and aligned with domain policies, the chances of legitimate emails being marked as spam or rejected are significantly reduced.

Brand Reputation Protection: Implementing these authentication methods helps maintain the integrity of your brand by preventing email abuse and spoofing, safeguarding your reputation among recipients and email service providers.

Improved Security: The use of DMARC, SPF, and DKIM together minimizes the risk of unauthorized entities sending malicious emails on behalf of your domain, strengthening overall security and mitigating potential cyber threats.

Reporting and Visibility: DMARC provides valuable reporting insights into email authentication failures, allowing domain owners to identify and address issues promptly, enhancing the effectiveness of their email security measures.

DMARC and SPF

DMARC and SPF is a powerful duo to bolster email security and protect against email spoofing and phishing attacks. DMARC builds upon SPF’s sender validation capabilities by allowing domain owners to set a policy on how to handle messages that fail SPF checks.

Should you use SPF and DKIM if you already have DMARC?

Yes, it is highly recommended to use both SPF and DKIM even if you have already implemented DMARC. DMARC is designed to work alongside SPF and DKIM, and together they form a powerful email authentication framework.

DMARC FAQ

Why use DMARC?

DMARC is essential for preventing email spoofing and phishing attacks, enhancing email deliverability, and safeguarding brand reputation by providing visibility and control over email authentication.

What is a DMARC Record?

A DMARC record a DNS (Domain Name System) entry that domain owners publish to specify their email authentication policy that helps prevent email spoofing and phishing attacks by instructing email receivers on how to handle unauthenticated emails from the domain. 

What is a DMARC Report?

A DMARC report provides information about email authentication results for a domain. These reports are generated by email receivers and sent to the email address specified in the DMARC record.

What is DMARC in telecom?

In the telecom sector, DMARC is crucial for ensuring secure communication channels between telecom service providers and their customers.

What is DMARC compliance?

DMARC compliance refers to the adherence of an email domain to the DMARC authentication protocol. When a domain implements DMARC with properly configured policies, SPF, and DKIM, it is considered DMARC compliant.

How to Fix DMARC Issues?

To address DMARC issues, domain owners should carefully review DMARC reports and analyze authentication failures. Read our DMARC fail guide to learn more.

How to test DMARC?

You can test DMARC by using our DMARC checker tool for free.

What is DMARC in networking?

DMARC maintains he integrity of network communications, and preventing unauthorized entities from impersonating network devices or services through email.

best dmarc software

April 5, 2023/by Ahona Rudra

Top 5 Evolved Email Fraud Scams: 2023 Trends

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Email serves as a critical channel for B2B lead generation and customer communications, but it is also one of the most widely targeted channels for cyberattacks and email fraud scams. Cybercriminals are always innovating their attacks in order to steal more information and financial assets. As organizations continue to fight back with stronger security measures, cybercriminals must constantly evolve their tactics and improve their phishing and spoofing techniques.

In 2023, a drastic increase in the use of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) based phishing attacks that are going undetected by traditional email security solutions have been detected by security researchers from around the world. The main aim of these attacks are to manipulate human behaviour and trick people into performing unauthorized actions – like transferring money to fraudsters’ accounts.

While the threat of email-based attacks and email fraud are always evolving, don’t stay behind. Know the email fraud trends that will take place in the following years in terms of fraudster tactics, tools, and malware. Through this blog post I’ll show you how cybercriminals are developing their tactics, and explain how your business can prevent this kind of email attack from taking place.

Types Of Email Fraud Scams to Beware of in 2023

1. Business Email Compromise (BEC)

COVID-19 has compelled organizations to implement remote-working environments and shift to virtual communication between employees, partners, and customers. While this has a few benefits to list down, the most apparent downside is the alarming rise in BEC over the past year. BEC is a broader term used for referring to email fraud attacks like email spoofing and phishing.

The common idea is that a cyber attacker uses your domain name to send emails to your partners, customers, or employees trying to steal corporate credentials to gain access to confidential assets or initiate wire transfers. BEC has affected more than 70% of organizations over the past year and has led to the loss of billions of dollars worth of company assets.

2. Evolved Email Phishing Attacks

Email phishing attacks have drastically evolved in the past few years although the motive has remained the same, it is the medium to manipulate your trusted partners, employees and clients into clicking on malicious links encapsulated within an email that appears to be sent from you, in order to initiate the installation of malware or credential theft. Evolved email scammers are sending phishing emails that are hard to detect. From writing impeccable subject lines and error-free content to creating fake landing pages with a high level of accuracy, manually tracing their activities have become increasingly difficult in 2023.

3. Man-In-The-Middle

Gone are the days when attackers sent out poorly-written emails that even a layman could identify as fraudulent. Threat actors these days are taking advantage of SMTP security problems like the use of opportunistic encryption in email transactions between two communicating email servers, by eavesdropping on the conversation after successfully rolling back the secured connection to an unencrypted one. MITM attacks like SMTP downgrade and DNS spoofing have been increasingly gaining popularity in 2023.

4. CEO Fraud

CEO fraud refers to the schemes that are being conducted that target high-level executives in order to gain access to confidential information. Attackers do this by taking the identities of actual people such as CEOs or CFOs and sending a message to people at lower levels within the organization, partners and clients, tricking them into giving away sensitive information. This type of attack is also called Business Email Compromise or whaling. In a business setting, some criminals are venturing to create a more believable email, by impersonating the decision-makers of an organization. This allows them to ask for easy money transfers or sensitive information about the company.

5. COVID-19 Vaccine Lures

Security researchers have unveiled that hackers are still trying to capitalize on the fears tied to the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent studies shed light on the cybercriminal mindset, revealing a continued interest in the state of panic surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and a measurable uptick in phishing and business email compromise (BEC) attacks targeting company leaders. The medium for perpetrating these attacks is a fake COVID-19 vaccine lure that instantly raises interest among email receivers.

How Can You Enhance Email Security?

  • Configure your domain with email authentication standards like SPF, DKIM and DMARC
  • Shift from DMARC monitoring to DMARC enforcement to gain maximum protection against BEC, CEO fraud and evolved phishing attacks
  • Consistently monitor email flow and authentication results from time to time
  • Make encryption mandatory in SMTP with MTA-STS to mitigate MITM attacks
  • Get regular notifications on email delivery issues with details on their root causes with SMTP TLS reporting (TLS-RPT)
  • Mitigate SPF permerror by staying under the 10 DNS lookup limit at all times
  • Help your recipients visually identify your brand in their inboxes with BIMI

PowerDMARC is your single email authentication SaaS platform that assembles all email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, MTA-STS, TLS-RPT and BIMI on a single pane of glass. Sign up today to get your free DMARC analyzer! 

best dmarc software

March 2, 2023/by Ahona Rudra

What is DMARC Vulnerability?

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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?

best dmarc software

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:

best dmarc software

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

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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

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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

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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!

best dmarc software

March 1, 2022/by Syuzanna Papazyan

Using DMARC to Secure Your Inactive/Parked Domains

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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!

best dmarc software

July 8, 2021/by Ahona Rudra
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