Fake emails are frequently used in phishing scams to deceive your customers into sharing sensitive information like passwords or credit card numbers. Every time this occurs, it damages the trust people have in your brand. Beyond that, spoofing and phishing attempts can lower the chances that your genuine emails will make it to customers’ inboxes at all. So how can you defend your brand and communications from these threats?
That’s where DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) comes in — a protocol designed to block unauthorized use of your domain in outgoing emails.
With DMARC, you can instruct email providers to either reject or quarantine messages that don’t originate from approved sources. This is determined using SPF and DKIM, two common authentication methods that verify an email’s legitimacy.
Lets explain DMARC, SPF, and DKIM – three basic email authentication methods that help protect your domain from abuse like phishing or spoofing:
SPF (Sender Policy Framework)
What it does: Tells which mail servers are allowed to send emails from your domain.
How it works: You publish a list of trusted servers in your domain’s DNS. If an email comes from somewhere else, it can be blocked or marked as suspicious.
Why it matters: Helps stop attackers from sending fake emails using your domain name.
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)
What it does: Adds a digital signature to your emails so the receiver can check if the email was changed and really came from your domain.
How it works: Your mail server signs the email with a private key. The receiver checks the signature using a public key stored in your DNS.
Why it matters: Makes sure the email content is trusted and not tampered with.
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance)
What it does: Combines SPF and DKIM results and tells the receiver what to do if an email fails the checks.
You can set these policies:
none – just collect reports, don’t block anything.
quarantine – send suspicious emails to spam.
reject – block emails that fail the checks.
How they work together
SPF and DKIM check if the email is from a trusted source.
DMARC tells the receiver how to handle emails that fail and gives you visibility into what’s happening.
Once DMARC is configured for your domains, providers like Yahoo and Gmail begin sending daily reports showing how emails sent from your domain perform in terms of DMARC compliance. We collect and interpret these reports for you, displaying the insights through an easy-to-use dashboard so you can monitor the sources and legitimacy of your email traffic — and take action if needed.
