The Role of DMARC in Email Security And Deliverability

In the digital world, securing your reputation has become very important. Modern technology allows bad actors to spoof legitimate sites and servers and hoodwink unsuspecting people for their own gain. The legitimate sites get their reputation destroyed because it appears as if they are the ones who scammed people.

Email sender reputation is one of the most important reputations that a company needs to maintain. If a domain is too often used for sending bad emails, such as for phishing and scamming, it gets blocked by mail servers.

Unfortunately, spoofing can get even legitimate domains blacklisted, so it is important to safeguard your domain and ensure that nobody can impersonate it. This is where DMARC comes in, as it provides a way to prevent spoofing and secure your email sender's reputation.

What is DMARC

DMARC stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance. It is a type of DNS TXT record. It works with two other types of TXT records, known as DKIM and SPF records. All three of these records are published in a DNS. 

The question remains: what does DMARC do? A DMARC record provides information to recipient mail servers about what to do when an email claiming to be from its domain fails either one or both the DKIM and SPF checks. 

Quick reminder: SPF records list which IP addresses and mail servers are authorized to send emails on behalf of a domain. DKIM records contain public cryptography keys whose signature should match a sent email's private key. If the signature matches, it means the email contents are safe and untampered. 

The role of DMARC starts after the SPF and DKIM checks. It tells the recipient server what to do with emails that fail the checks. It can instruct them to do any of the following things based on the defined policy:

• None: Allow the delivery of the email, but monitor and report.

• Quarantine: Move the email to the junk/spam folder and report.

• Reject: do not allow the mail to be delivered, and report.

The reports demanded by DMARC include the following information.

• Information about whether an email passed authentication or not.

• The sender’s IP address and other details

• What did the receiving server do with the mail (i.e., accepted, rejected, quarantined)?

A DMARC record also specifies where the reports should be sent. 

Role of DMARC in Email Security and Deliverability

You may have already guessed some of the benefits of DMARC in email security and deliverability. Nevertheless, let us list them out for you.

1. Reduces the Chances of Spoofing

Spoofing is impersonation. A bad actor will send false information to a recipient to make them think they are trustworthy. In emails, spoofing is when a bad actor impersonates a legitimate domain to fool recipients into believing they are authentic. 

Spoofed emails empower bad actors to claim they are legitimate and get unsuspecting people to share their sensitive information, like account details and credit card info. They can even dupe people into wiring money to them. As such, they are a huge security risk.

DMARC can mitigate this risk by telling receiving mail servers to quarantine or outright reject spoofed emails (those that failed the SPF and DKIM checks). This means that the end user will not receive the email, or at the very least, they will be cautious about it.

As such, fewer people will fall prey to email spoofing scams. This enhances email security and raises your own email sender’s reputation.

2. Monitoring and Reporting

One of DMARC’s important features is that they can elicit reports from the receiving mail servers. As we previously mentioned, these reports contain information about the sender’s IP address, whether the email passed authentication or not, and what action did the server take. 

Security experts can peruse these reports to potentially identify the bad actors that are spoofing the emails and report them to the cyber police. This can discourage further attempts at spoofing your domain for emails and improve your sender’s reputation. 

Similarly, domain owners can monitor and identify legitimate emails that are failing authentication checks and diagnose them for problems. This can improve the email delivery rate of their domain. 

It may even help identify problems with the DMARC records itself. Domain owners should regularly validate their DMARC records with a tool such as https://dnschecker.org/dmarc-record-validation.php. This can help them identify things like:

• DMARC records recency (how long ago were they updated),

• Whether they are implementing the desired policies or not,

• Are they valid, i.e., their formatting and information is recognizable,

• Is the reporting function on or off,

• Are the domains to which reports are sent working or not?

This kind of regular validation will eventually result in improved email security and deliverability. 

3. Reducing False Positives 

Email deliverability is negatively affected when a domain’s emails keep getting flagged as spam/junk. Without configuring DMARC records, the delivery of an email to a primary inbox is entirely dependent on the receiving mail server.

The receiver’s policies will dictate whether the email will be rejected, accepted, or put in the spam folder. Rather than rely on the goodwill of the recipient, you can configure DMARC records to get all your legitimate emails into the primary inbox of the recipient.

Any email that has passed the authentication checks of SPF and DKIM will be accepted without a second thought because the DMARC records tell the receiver to do so. 

As such, the chances of your emails being accepted and delivered will increase, thereby enhancing your email deliverability. Good email deliverability is mandatory for the success of email marketing campaigns and communication-sensitive operations.

4. Combatting Email Extraction:

 Email extraction, the process of harvesting email addresses from websites or databases for malicious purposes, poses a significant threat to individuals and organizations. While DMARC itself does not directly address email extraction, its role in email authentication indirectly helps mitigate this risk. By verifying the legitimacy of incoming emails, DMARC makes it harder for attackers to impersonate legitimate senders and deceive recipients into disclosing sensitive information.

Conclusion 

Properly validated DMARC records are a boon to email senders and receivers. These records help email service providers understand whether an email is spoofed or not. They also dictate what to do with emails that are spoofed, such as rejecting or quarantining them.

The report feature of DMARC records makes them good for the analysis of emails. By checking the reports, a professional can potentially find out the identity and location of bad actors who are spoofing emails. 

DMARC records, when properly validated, empower domains to secure their emails, improve their deliverability, and protect their sender reputation.