Sender Policy Framework

A Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is a system for validating email senders and preventing email spoofing. An SPF checks incoming emails against a list of authorised senders and ensures that the emails come from a sender on that list. The SPF list is stored as a TXT record in the DNS records for your organisation’s domain.

Email spam and phishing emails often use spoofed addresses. Email ‘spoofing’ involves the creation of an email with the aim of fooling the receiver into believing the email came from someone or somewhere other than the original source. Most users will take this at face value and trust the email is from who it says it’s from. This makes the recipient more likely to fall victim to phishing emails which are trying to convince them to open malicious links, download malware or hand over sensitive data.

• An SPF helps to prevent spam email
• An SPF helps you have confidence that your emails are truly from who they say they are from

A sender policy framework can be extremely effective at preventing spam if set up correctly. However, if configured or implemented incorrectly, it can lead to genuine emails being incorrectly blocked, or spam emails still making it through to your inbox. This is why it is advisable to have a professional managed IT services provider define and implement your Sender Policy Framework for you. At Carden IT Services, we do the following to make this easy for our clients:

• We collate all the IP addresses currently used to send emails from your organisation.
• List all the domains you use to send mail (if you use more than one).
• Use these lists to create your custom Sender Policy Framework record.
• Upload this SPF record to your DNS server.
• Test your new SPF record to ensure it is working correctly.