DMARC is a standard email authentication protocol that when configured on top of existing SPF and DKIM records helps you confirm whether either or both of the authentication checks have failed.
The importance of DMARC is evident in the field of sender verification and spoofing protection. If a threat actor sends an email on behalf of your company DMARC allows you to take an authoritative action against it. This helps stop spam and phishing in its tracks by helping businesses implement email security.
Protecting your emails is important for keeping your customers safe from cybercriminals who might steal their personal information. In this blog post, we’ll explain why is DMARC important and what you can do to implement it correctly for your domain.
How Important is DMARC in Email Security?
DMARC is an email authentication standard that helps to protect your organization from spoofing attacks. When you set up DMARC, it tells the world whether or not your emails are coming from you. This is called alignment. If your emails are aligned, it means that the domain is sending emails that are coming from your domain.
DMARC protects against this by setting up a system where you can specify what email domains are allowed to use your domain name in their “From” field. This way, if someone tries to send an email from a domain that isn’t on your whitelist, you can choose for it to be rejected by the receiving server before it even gets to your receiver’s inbox
You can also use DMARC to monitor the abuse of your domain name by sending daily reports about any unauthorized emails sent with your domain in their From field. This is important because it helps you identify which messages are being sent without authorization and who might be sending them—which could be useful if there are any legal issues down the road
The Importance of DMARC in Email Deliverability
If you are still unsure about whether you should be using DMARC, let’s count down a few benefits that it provides to better understand why DMARC is important in the current digital landscape:
- DMARC provides robust authentication, minimizes phishing, and reduces false positives.
- Increases deliverability and reduce bouncing
- Receives comprehensive reports of how messages are authenticated
- Identifies spammers and prevents bogus messages from reaching inboxes
- Reduces the chances of your emails being marked or flagged as spam
- Gives you better visibility and authority over your domains and email channels
If DMARC is so important, why are adoption rates still low?
DMARC is supported by Microsoft Office 365, Google Workspace, and other popular cloud-based solutions. Since 2010, DMARC has been a part of the email authentication process. Its aim was to make it more difficult for cybercriminals to send spam emails from a valid address, helping to combat the epidemic of phishing attacks.
Domain owners of small businesses and enterprises are encouraged by industry experts to create a DMARC record to provide instructions for how their email domain is to be protected. This in turn helps preserve their brand reputation and identity.
However, many businesses are still unfamiliar with the steps to set it up and find it hard to manage and monitor their configurations. PowerDMARC’s hosted DMARC solution is, therefore, a game-changer! We help businesses easily set up, manage, and optimize their DMARC records. It’s so easy, anyone can do it!
The Role of DMARC in Mail Flow Monitoring
DMARC’s importance is further highlighted through the role that it plays in mail flow monitoring:
- DMARC enables the detailed reporting, providing information about the alignment between the sender’s domain, the message’s header, and the message’s body. Monitoring these reports allow organizations to identify unauthorized senders or potential email delivery issues.
- By implementing DMARC, organizations gain visibility into how their domain is being used online. They can track the IP addresses behind domains that are sending emails using their domain name, whether it’s legitimate or fraudulent.
How to establish your domain’s DMARC record?
Having established why DMARC is important, let’s find out how we can enable it.
DMARC can be implemented by creating a DMARC record. This can establish a baseline of protection against phishing scams, but you’ll also get some very valuable information about how people are using email from your company—information that can help guide future decisions about what kinds of messages might be appropriate for various audiences.
Steps to configure your domain with email authentication protocols are as follows:
- Create an SPF record and check it using an SPF checker to make sure the record is functional and devoid of possible syntactical errors
- Enable DKIM authentication for your domain
- Finally set up your domain with DMARC and enable DMARC reporting by configuring our DMARC report analyzer free
In Conclusion
The need for DMARC is evident when we notice the surge in cyber threats, especially the exploitation landscape in SMTP email communications. Therefore, DMARC has not only gained substantial importance in recent years but some companies are striving toward making it mandatory for their employees so as to prevent the loss of sensitive data and resources. Hence, it is time that you take into consideration its various benefits and shift towards a safer email experience.
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