DMARC

The longer you are in business and the more successful you become, the more your company becomes a trusted name. Scammers will take advantage of the trust your customers and even the general public places in you by hijacking your domain and sending out phishing emails and other scams. DMARC can help prevent this, which makes it a must for any domain owner looking to safeguard their business, their customers and their reputation.

DMARC stands for Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance. It is a protocol that has been used since 2012 to authenticate that an email is genuine and then take action automatically if it is suspected that the email is spam or is a phishing attempt. DMARC is a vital part of your email security, along with a sender policy framework and DKIM public cryptography key. DMARC is an open standard and is free to implement but requires technical knowledge to do so correctly.

What Are The Different DMARC Policies?
There are three different DMARC policies which can be implemented. By implementing a DMARC policy, you can inform email servers how to deal with unauthorised messages sent from your email domain.

• DMARC Policy p=none

This policy monitors your email traffic but does not take any further action.

• DMARC Policy p=quarantine

This policy instructs email servers to move any unauthorised emails sent from your domain straight to the spam folder.

• DMARC Policy p=reject

The most stringent DMARC policy. This will prevent any unauthorised emails from being delivered.

Email is the number one attack vector for ransomware, malware and phishing attempts. Despite DMARC’s effectiveness at combatting these, it is estimated that as few as 10% of businesses have a DMARC policy in place. A properly configured DMARC policy protects your customers and the general public from email-based threats which are using your domain illegally. This also protects your reputation as it prevents your domain from being associated with criminals.

Rather than relying on spam filters to detect and block suspicious emails, DMARC offers an easy way to authenticate genuine emails from your domain. With the growing number of email-based threats, this approach of whitelisting genuine emails is far more effective than relying on email servers’ spam filters trying to fight back a rising tide of suspicious email.