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How to Fix “No DMARC Record Found”?

If you are here reading this blog, chances are you have come across either of the three common prompts:

  • No DMARC record
  • No DMARC record found
  • DMARC record is missing

Either way, this only implies that your domain is not configured with the most highly acclaimed and popularly used email authentication standard- Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance or DMARC. Let’s take a look at what it is:

What is DMARC and why do you need email authentication for your domain?

In order to learn about how to fix the “No DMARC record found” issue, let’s learn what DMARC is all about. DMARC is the most widely used email authentication standard in the current time, which is designed to empower domain owners with the ability to specify to receiving servers how they should handle messages that fail SPF or DKIM or both. This in turn helps in protecting their domain from unauthorized access and email spoofing attacks. DMARC uses two popular standard authentication protocols, namely SPF and DKIM, to validate inbound and outbound messages from your domain. Let’s discuss them individually:

Sender Policy Framework

SPF is present in your DNS as a TXT record, displaying all the valid sources that are authorized to send emails from your domain. Every email that leaves your domain has an IP address that identifies your server and the email service provider used by your domain that is enlisted within your DNS as an SPF record. The receiver’s mail server validates the email against your SPF record to authenticate it and accordingly marks the email as SPF pass or fail.

DomainKeys Identified Mail

DKIM is a standard email authentication protocol that assigns a cryptographic signature, created using a private key, to validate emails in the receiving server, wherein the receiver can retrieve the public key from the sender’s DNS to authenticate the messages. Much like SPF, the DKIM public key also exists as a TXT record in the DNS of the domain owner.

Protect Your Business from Impersonation Attacks and Spoofing with DMARC

Did you know that email is the easiest way cybercriminals can abuse your brand name?

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 SPF and DKIM 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, 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.

Adding The Missing DMARC Record for Your Domain

For fixing the “No DMARC record found” issue for your domain all you need to do is add a DMARC record for your domain. Adding a DMARC record is essentially publishing a text (TXT) record in your domain’s DNS, in the _dmarc.example.com subdomain in compliance with DMARC specifications. A DMARC TXT Record in your DNS may look something like this:

v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:[email protected]

And Voila! You have successfully resolved the “No DMARC record found” prompt as your domain is now configured with DMARC authentication and contains a DMARC record.

But is this enough? The answer is no. Simply adding a DMARC TXT record to your DNS may resolve the missing DMARC prompt, but it is simply not enough to mitigate impersonation attacks and spoofing.

Implement DMARC the Right Way with PowerDMARC

PowerDMARC helps your organization achieve 100% DMARC Compliance by aligning both SPF and DKIM authentication standards, and helping you shift from monitoring to enforcement in no time! Furthermore, our interactive and user-friendly 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

All you need to do is:

  • Use PowerDMARC’s free SPF record generator to publish your SPF record in your DNS and align your emails with SPF authentication with just a few clicks!
  • Use PowerDMARC’s free DKIM record generator to publish your DKIM record in your DNS and align your emails with DKIM authentication with just a few clicks!
  • After successfully configuring SPF and DKIM for your domain, you can generate your free DMARC record with PowerDMARC and select your desired DMARC policy with ease.

The DMARC policy can be set to :

  • p=none (DMARC is set at monitoring only, wherein emails failing SPF and DKIM will still be delivered to your recipient’s inboxes, however, you will be getting aggregate reports informing you about the authentication results)
  • p=quarantine (DMARC is set at enforcement level, wherein emails failing SPF and DKIM will be delivered to the spam box instead of your recipient’s inbox)
  • p=reject (DMARC is set at maximum enforcement level, wherein emails failing SPF and DKIM would either be deleted or not delivered at all)

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 set up to monitoring. We help you implement DMARC correctly to help keep impersonation attacks at bay!

So sign up with PowerDMARC to configure DMARC for your domain correctly today!

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How to Select the Best DMARC Software Solution to Protect Your Business from Email Spoofing?

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance is the most widely acclaimed email authentication protocol in recent times, that can help small businesses, as well as multinational enterprises, mitigate impersonation, email spoofing attacks and BEC. DMARC makes use of two of the standard existent protocols in the arena of email authentication, namely SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail). DMARC solutions can help in validating every inbound and outbound email for authenticity and mitigate email-based attacks and security breaches.

When selecting the best DMARC software solution for your business, you need to look for a few basic features that the solution must include! Let’s discuss what they are:

A User-Friendly Dashboard

A user-friendly dashboard offering you complete visibility into your email ecosystem and effectively displaying reports on emails passing and failing DMARC authentication from your domain in a readable and comprehensible format is imperative. This is one of the key points that you must look out for when choosing the best DMARC software solution for your company.

Detailed Aggregate and Forensic Reporting

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 records may appear indecipherable. The best DMARC software solution for your organization will covert these incomprehensible aggregate reports from complex XML files into information you can easily understand that allow you to analyze your results and do the needful changes

For SMEs as well as MNCs, Forensic reports provide valuable insight into your email ecosystem, 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, and fix issues in email delivery at a speedy pace.

DMARC Forensic Reports Encryption

DMARC Forensic reports contain data about every individual email that failed DMARC. This implies that they might potentially include confidential information that was present in those emails. 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 your forensic reports so that only authorized users have access to them.

SPF and DKIM Alignment

Although DMARC compliance can be achieved by SPF or DKIM alignment, it is preferable to align your emails against both the authentication standards. Unless your emails are aligned and authenticated against both SPF and DKIM authentication protocols and rely on only SPF for validation, there is a chance that legitimate emails may still fail DMARC authentication (like in the case of forwarded messages). This is because the IP address of the intermediary server may not be included in the SPF record of your domain, thereby failing SPF. However, unless the mail body gets altered during forwarding, the DKIM signature is retained by the email, which can be used to validate its authenticity. The best DMARC software solution for your business will make sure that all your inbound and outbound messages are aligned against both SPF and DKIM.

Staying under the 10 DNS Lookup Limit

SPF records have a limit of 10 DNS lookups. If your organization has a wide base of operations or you rely on third-party vendors to send emails on your behalf, your SPF record could easily exceed the limit and hit the permerror. This invalidates your SPF implementation, and make your emails inevitably fail SPF. This is why you should search for a solution that helps you instantly optimize your SPF record to always stay under the 10 DNS lookup limit to mitigate SPF permerror!

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.

Scheduling Executive PDF Reports

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.

 

Hosted BIMI Record

Brand Indicators for Message Identification or BIMI, allows your email recipients to visually identify your unique brand logo in their inboxes, and rest assured that the email is from an authentic source. An efficient service provider can hook you up with BIMI implementation along with standard authentication protocols like DMARC, SPF and DKIM, thereby enhancing your brand recall and upholding your brand’s reputation and integrity.

Platform Security and Configuration

An effective DMARC solution will make your work easy by detecting all your subdomains automatically, as well as providing two-factor authentication to enable absolute security of your authentication platform.

Threat Intelligence

For enhanced visibility and insight, what you need is an AI-driven Threat Intelligence (TI) engine which 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 armour you against malicious activities and repeated occurrences of domain abuse in the future.

A Proactive Support Team

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

PowerDMARC Analyzer Tool

Our DMARC Analyzer Tool is effective enough to take you through the entire process of implementation and help you shift from monitoring to DMARC enforcement and 100% DMARC compliance 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. From hosted BIMI record generation, to forensic reporting with encryption, PowerDMARC is your one-stop destination for the ultimate email security suite.

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 free DMARC trial today with PowerDMARC !

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Email Forwarding and Its Impact on DMARC Authentication-Results

When an email is sent from the sending server, directly to the receiving server, SPF and DKIM  (if set up correctly) authenticate the email normally and usually effectively validate it as legitimate or unauthorized. However, that is not the case if the email passes through an intermediary mail server before it gets delivered to the recipient, such as in the case of forwarded messages. This blog is intended to take you through the impact of email forwarding on DMARC authentication-results.

As we already know, DMARC makes use of two standard email authentication protocols, namely SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), to validate inbound messages. Let’s discuss them in brief to get a better understanding of how they function before hopping on to how forwarding can affect them.

Sender Policy Framework

SPF is present in your DNS as a TXT record, displaying all the valid sources that are authorized to send emails from your domain. Every email that leaves your domain has an IP address that identifies your server and the email service provider used by your domain that is enlisted within your DNS as an SPF record. The receiver’s mail server validates the email against your SPF record to authenticate it and accordingly marks the email as SPF pass or fail.

DomainKeys Identified Mail

DKIM is a standard email authentication protocol that assigns a cryptographic signature, created using a private key, to validate emails in the receiving server, wherein the receiver can retrieve the public key from the sender’s DNS to authenticate the messages. Much like SPF, the DKIM public key also exists as a TXT record in the DNS of the domain owner.

The Impact of Email Forwarding on Your DMARC Authentication Results

During email forwarding the email passes through an intermediary server before it ultimately gets delivered to the receiving server. Firstly it is important to realize that email forwarding can be done in two ways- either emails can be manually forwarded, which does not affect the authentication results, or it can be automatically forwarded, in which case the authentication procedure does take a hit if the domain doesn’t have the record for the intermediary sending source in their SPF.

Naturally, usually during email forwarding SPF check fails since the IP address of the intermediary server doesn’t match that of the sending server, and this new IP address is usually not included within the original server’s SPF record. On the contrary, forwarding emails usually don’t impact DKIM email authentication, unless the intermediary server or the forwarding entity makes certain alterations in the content of the message.

Note that for an email to pass DMARC authentication, the email would be required to pass either SPF or DKIM authentication and alignment. As we know that SPF inevitably fails during email forwarding, if in case the sending source is DKIM neutral and solely relies on SPF for validation, the forwarded email will be rendered illegitimate during DMARC authentication.

The solution? Simple. You should immediately opt for full DMARC compliance at your organization by aligning and authenticating all inbound messages against both SPF and DKIM!

Achieving DMARC Compliance with PowerDMARC

It is important to note that in order to achieve DMARC compliance, emails need to be authenticated against either SPF or DKIM or both. However, unless the forwarded messages get validated against DKIM, and rely on only SPF for authentication, DMARC will inevitably fail as discussed in our previous section. This is why PowerDMARC helps you achieve complete DMARC compliance by effectively aligning and authenticating emails against both SPF and DKIM authentication protocols. In this way, even if authentic forwarded messages fail SPF, the DKIM signature can be used to validate it as legitimate and the email passes DMARC authentication, subsequently landing into the receiver’s inbox.

Exceptional Cases: DKIM Fail and How to Resolve It?

In certain cases, the forwarding entity may alter the mail body by making adjustments in MIME boundaries, implementation of anti-virus programs, or re-encoding the message. In such cases, both SPF and DKIM authentication fails and legitimate emails do not get delivered.

Incase both SPF and DKIM fail, PowerDMARC is able to identify and display that in our detailed aggregate views and protocols like Authenticated Received Chain can be leveraged by mail servers to authenticate such emails. In ARC, Authentication-Results header can be passed onto the next ‘hop’ in the line of the message delivery, to effectively mitigate authentication issues while email forwarding.

In case of a forwarded message, when the receiver’s email server receives a message that had failed DMARC authentication, it tries to validate the email for a second time, against the provided Authenticated Received Chain for the email by extracting the ARC Authentication-Results of the initial hop, to check whether it was validated to be legitimate before the intermediary server forwarded it to the receiving server.

So sign up with PowerDMARC today, and achieve DMARC compliance at your organization!

 

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Your Comprehensive Guide to Authenticated Received Chain (ARC) System for DMARC

ARC or Authenticated Received Chain is an email authentication system that displays an email’s authentication assessment each step of the way, throughout handling. In simpler terms, the Authenticated Received chain can be termed as a “ chain of custody” for email messages that enable each entity that handles the messages to effectively see all the entities that previously handled it. As a relatively new protocol published and documented as “Experimental” in RFC 8617 on July 2019, ARC enables the receiving server to validate emails even when SPF and DKIM are rendered invalid by an intermediate server.

How Can Authenticated Received Chain Help?

As we already know, DMARC allows an email to be authenticated against the SPF and DKIM email authentication standards, specifying to the receiver how to handle the emails that fail or pass authentication. However, if you implement DMARC enforcement at your organization to a strict DMARC policy, there are chances that even legitimate emails such as those sent through a mailing list or a forwarder, may fail authentication and not get delivered to the receiver! Authenticated Received Chain helps mitigate this problem effectively. Let’s learn how in the following section:

Situations in Which ARC Can Help

  • Mailing Lists 

As a member of a mailing list, you have the power to send messages to all members in the list at one go by addressing the mailing list itself. The receiving address then subsequently forwards your message to all list members. In the current situation, DMARC fails to validate these types of messages and the authentication fails even though the email has been sent from a legitimate source! This is because SPF breaks when a message is forwarded. As the mailing list often goes on to incorporate extra information in the email body, the DKIM signature can also be invalidated due to changes in the email content.

  • Forwarding Messages 

When there is an indirect mail flow, such as you are receiving an email from an intermediate server and not directly from the sending server as in the case of forwarded messages, SPF breaks and your email will automatically fail DMARC authentication. Some forwarders also alter the email content which is why the DKIM signatures also get invalidated.

 

 

In such situations, Authenticated Received Chain comes to the rescue! How? Let’s find out:

How Does ARC Function?

In the situations listed above, the forwarders had initially received emails that had been validated against DMARC setup, from an authorized source. Authenticated Received Chain is developed as a specification that allows the Authentication-Results header to be passed on to the next ‘hop’ in the line of the message delivery.

In case of a forwarded message, when the receiver’s email server receives a message that had failed DMARC authentication, it tries to validate the email for a second time, against the provided Authenticated Received Chain for the email by extracting the ARC Authentication-Results of the initial hop, to check whether it was validated to be legitimate before the intermediary server forwarded it to the receiving server.

On the basis of the information extracted, the receiver decides whether to allow the ARC results to override the DMARC policy, thereby passing the email as authentic and valid and allowing it to be delivered normally into the receiver’s inbox.

With ARC implementation, the receiver can effectively authenticate the email with the help of the following information:

  • The authentication results as witnessed by the intermediate server, along with the entire history of SPF and DKIM validation results in the initial hop.
  • Necessary information to authenticate the sent data.
  • Information to link the sent signature to the intermediary server so that the email gets validated in the receiving server even if the intermediary alters the content, as long as they forward a new and valid DKIM signature.

Implementation of Authenticated Received Chain

ARC defines three new mail headers:

  • ARC-Authentication-Results (AAR): First among the mail headers is the AAR that encapsulates the authentication results such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.

  • ARC-Seal (AS) – AS is a simpler version of a DKIM signature, that contains information on authentication header results, and ARC signature.

  • ARC-Message-Signature (AMS) – AMS is also similar to a DKIM signature, which takes an image of the message header which incorporates everything apart from ARC-Seal headers such as the To: and From: fields, subject, and the entire body of the message.

Steps performed by the intermediate server to sign a modification:

Step 1: the server copies the Authentication-Results field into a new AAR field and prefixes it to the message

Step 2: the server formulates the AMS for the message (with the AAR) and prepends it to the message.

Step 3: the server formulates the AS for the previous ARC-Seal headers and adds it to the message.

Finally, to validate the Authenticated Received Chain and find out whether a forwarded message is legitimate or not, the receiver validates the chain or ARC Seal-headers and the newest ARC-Message-Signature. If in case the ARC headers have been altered in any way the email consequently fails DKIM authentication. However, if all mail servers involved in the transmission of the message correctly sign and transmit ARC then the email preserves the DKIM authentication results, and passes DMARC authentication, resulting in the successful delivery of the message in the receiver’s inbox!

ARC implementation backs-up and supports DMARC adoption in organizations to make sure that every legitimate email gets authenticated without a single lapse. Sign up for your free DMARC trial today!

 

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Black Friday to Incur Surge in Email Spoofing Attacks- Are You Prepared?

Shoppers from around the world wait intently for the days following up to Thanksgiving, especially in the US, to grab the best deals on Black Friday. Major retail stores and e-commerce platforms from around the world dealing in a wide range of products launch their coveted Black Friday sales, dispensing products at striking discount rates to their scalable customer base.

However, while it is a time for these organizations to make a lot of money, it is also a time when cybercriminals are the most active! Researchers from around the world have concluded that there is a steep surge in the number of spoofing and phishing attacks, leading up to Black Friday. To protect your online shoppers from falling prey to these spoofing attempts, implementing DMARC as an integral part of your workplace security policy is imperative.

Spoofing Attacks- Exploring the Threat Landscape on Black Friday

Spoofing is essentially an impersonation attack that is a more sophisticated attempt at implicating a renowned brand or organization. Spoofing attacks may be launched by deploying various methods. The cybercriminals may target more technical elements of an organization’s network, such as an IP address, domain name system (DNS) server, or Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) service, as part of a spoofing attack.

Research reveals that there is a steep increase in impersonation and spoofing attempts in the days leading up to Black Friday every single year, and yet 65% of the leading online retail stores and e-commerce platforms as of 2020 have no published DMARC record whatsoever!

Wondering what the consequence might be?

The main agenda of cybercriminals while spoofing your domain name is to send out fraudulent emails integrated with phishing links. The attacker tries to lure in your brand’s esteemed customer base with hollow promises of providing unbelievable offers and discount coupons on Black Friday while posing as your customer support. Vulnerable customers who have been shopping on your platform for years and trust your company, wouldn’t think twice before opening the email and trying to avail of the offers.

Using this tactic, attackers spread ransomware and malware, instigate money transfers, or try to steal confidential information from consumers.

Ultimately, your company might end up facing legal repercussions, suffer a blow to its reputation, and lose the confidence of its customers. For these reasons, it’s wise to learn about how you can protect your brand from the surge in spoofing attacks this Black Friday.

Protect Your Business from Spoofing Attacks with DMARC

It is unnatural to expect your consumers to be aware of the changing trends and tactics of cybercriminals, which is why you should be proactive and take necessary action to prevent attackers from using your domain name to carry out malicious activities this Black Friday.

The best and easiest way to ensure that? Implement a leading-edge DMARC-based email authentication tool in your organization at once! Let’s count down the benefits of it:

AI-Driven Email Authentication

You can stop attackers from forging your email header and sending out phishing emails to your customers with the DMARC analyzer tool that makes use of SPF and DKIM email authentication technologies to block out spoofed emails before they can manage to land in the receiver’s inbox.

Publishing a DMARC record enables you to be in total control of your email channels by verifying each and every sending source and enjoying the freedom of optimizing your DMARC policy (none, quarantine or reject)  as per your requirements.

DMARC reporting and monitoring

A DMARC-based authentication and reporting tool like PowerDMARC extends the facilities provided by DMARC by including provisions to report and monitor spoofing and phishing activities in real-time, without affecting your email deliverability rate. Through threat mapping, you can find out the geo-locations of the abusers of your IP address including reports on their history of domain abuse, and blacklist them with the click of a button!

This not only provides you with adequate visibility of your brand’s email domain but also empowers you to monitor any attempts at impersonation and stay updated on the changing tactics of cybercriminals. By monitoring your email reports, you can see which ones passed, failed, or didn’t align with DMARC and at which stage, to get to the root of the problem so that you can take action against it. Comprehensive and readable reports on the same take you through every detail, from SPF verification to DKIM records, highlighting all the IPs that failed DMARC authentication.

Staying under the DNS look-up limit

Your company may have various third-party vendors making it difficult for you to stay under the 10 DNS lookup limit provided by SPF. If you exceed the limit, your SPF will fail, making the implementation useless. However, upgrading to PowerSPF keeps your lookup limit under check by giving you the ability to add/remove senders from your SPF record without ever exceeding the 10 DNS lookup limit.

Enhance Your Brand Recall with BIMI

To provide your email domain with a second layer of authentication and credibility, you should confide in a hosted BIMI record. Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) is exactly what you need in times like these, to flatten the surge in spoofing attacks prior to Black Friday. This standard affixes your exclusive brand logo on every email you send out to your customer base, letting them know it’s you and not an impersonator.

  • BIMI enhances brand recall and reinforces brand image among your customers, letting them visually confirm that the email is genuine.
  • It increases brand credibility and reliability
  • It improves email deliverability

Upgrade your organization’s security suit and protect your brand against domain abuse this Black Friday with PowerDMARC. Book a demo or sign up for a free DMARC trial today!

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So You Just Got to 100% DMARC Enforcement. What Now?

All right, you’ve just gone through the whole process of setting up DMARC for your domain. You published your SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, you analysed all your reports, fixed delivery issues, bumped up your enforcement level from p=none to quarantine and finally to reject. You’re officially 100% DMARC-enforced. Congratulations! Now only your emails reach people’s inboxes. No one’s going to impersonate your brand if you can help it.

So that’s it, right? Your domain’s secured and we can all go home happy, knowing your emails are going to be safe. Right…?

Well, not exactly. DMARC is kind of like exercise and diet: you do it for a while and lose a bunch of weight and get some sick abs, and everything’s going great. But if you stop, all those gains you just made are slowly going to diminish, and the risk of spoofing starts creeping back in. But don’t freak out! Just like with diet and exercise, getting fit (ie. getting to 100% enforcement) is the hardest part. Once you’ve done that, you just need to maintain it on that same level, which is much easier.

Okay, enough with the analogies, let’s get down to business. If you’ve just implemented and enforced DMARC on your domain, what’s the next step? How do you continue keeping your domain and email channels secure?

What to Do After Achieving DMARC Enforcement

The #1 reason that email security doesn’t simply end after you reach 100% enforcement is that attack patterns, phishing scams, and sending sources are always changing. A popular trend in email scams often doesn’t even last longer than a couple of months. Think of the WannaCry ransomware attacks in 2018, or even something as recent as the WHO Coronavirus phishing scams in early 2020. You don’t see much of those in the wild right now, do you?

Cybercriminals are constantly changing their tactics, and malicious sending sources are always changing and multiplying, and there’s not much you can do about it. What you can do is prepare your brand for any possible cyberattack that could come at you. And the way to do that is through DMARC monitoring & visibility .

Even after you’re enforced, you still need to be in total control of your email channels. That means you have to know which IP addresses are sending emails through your domain, where you’re having issues with email delivery or authentication, and identify and respond to any potential spoofing attempt or malicious server carrying a phishing campaign on your behalf. The more you monitor your domain, the better you’ll come to understand it. And consequently, the better you’ll be able to secure your emails, your data and your brand.

Why DMARC Monitoring is So Important

Identifying new mail sources
When you monitor your email channels, you’re not just checking to see if everything’s going okay. You’re also going to be looking for new IPs sending emails from your domain. Your organization might change its partners or third party vendors every so often, which means their IPs might become authorized to send emails on your behalf. Is that new sending source just one of your new vendors, or is it someone trying to impersonate your brand? If you analyse your reports regularly, you’ll have a definite answer to that.

PowerDMARC lets you view your DMARC reports according to every sending source for your domain.

Understanding new trends of domain abuse
As I mentioned earlier, attackers are always finding new ways to impersonate brands and trick people into giving them data and money. But if you only ever look at your DMARC reports once every couple of months, you’re not going to notice any telltale signs of spoofing. Unless you regularly monitor the email traffic in your domain, you won’t notice trends or patterns in suspicious activity, and when you are hit with a spoofing attack, you’ll be just as clueless as the people targeted by the email. And trust me, that’s never a good look for your brand.

Find and blacklist malicious IPs
It’s not enough just to find who exactly is trying to abuse your domain, you need to shut them down ASAP. When you’re aware of your sending sources, it’s much easier to pinpoint an offending IP, and once you’ve found it, you can report that IP to their hosting provider and have them blacklisted. This way, you permanently eliminate that specific threat and avoid a spoofing attack.

With Power Take Down, you find the location of a malicious IP, their history of abuse, and have them taken down.

Control over deliverability
Even if you were careful to bring DMARC up to 100% enforcement without affecting your email delivery rates, it’s important to continuously ensure consistently high deliverability. After all, what’s the use of all that email security if none of the emails are making it to their destination? By monitoring your email reports, you can see which ones passed, failed or didn’t align with DMARC, and discover the source of the problem. Without monitoring, it would be impossible to know if your emails are being delivered, let alone fix the issue.

PowerDMARC gives you the option of viewing reports based on their DMARC status so you can instantly identify which ones didn’t make it through.

 

Our cutting-edge platform offers 24×7 domain monitoring and even gives you a dedicated security response team that can manage a security breach for you. Learn more about PowerDMARC extended support.

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