Just like SPF offers domain owners the choice between Softfail and Hardfail, DMARC has three enforcement rules: none, quarantine, and reject. Each has its own significance and relevance in the DMARC compliance journey.
Email security is a growing concern for businesses and individuals alike. Increased email spoofing and phishing attempts have made it crucial to implement security measures to safeguard communication channels. One such powerful tool to protect email communications is DMARC or Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance. Its job is to authenticate email messages and take suitable action against unauthorized emails. The DMARC policy works in coordination with SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) protocols.
The emails you send out to your clients have the potential to transform your business. Although you might already know this, what you might not be aware of is that not all your emails reach your recipients’ inboxes. Instead of landing in the inbox where the recipient can read and engage with the email, some emails might get flagged as spam or, worse, fail to deliver altogether. There are many reasons this could happen, but the most common reasons that Email Service Providers (ESPs) flag your emails are improper authentication, suspicious activities, or malicious actors attempting to spoof your domain. These are some of the last things you would want for your emails.
You might already know that it’s not only your domain that sends out emails. In most cases, there are third-party services or entities, such as CRM systems, marketing platforms, payment platforms, etc., that might send out emails on your behalf. But have you really paid attention to the security implications of these systems? Although you might have authorized these platforms to send emails to your clients on your behalf, chances are that they might become a blind spot for you and a doorway for attackers to execute their malicious attacks.
Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) is one of the most powerful tools that security teams rely on to combat email-based attacks such as phishing, spoofing, and Business Email Compromise (BEC). Essentially, this tool enables domain owners to protect their domains from scammers by specifying how emails should be handled if they fail authentication checks. But the best part about DMARC is that it goes beyond enforcing policies to block malicious emails; it gives you insights into all that’s going on with your domain and its email traffic. We are talking about the reporting aspect of DMARC, which works hand-in-hand with enforcement to create a complete email security system.
With rapid digitization, email has become one of the most effective communication tools, both for business and corporate entities. However, the matter of concern is that the same emails are a favorite avenue for threat actors who exploit them to carry out malicious attacks, impersonate trusted brands, and spam naive users. This is where DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) steps in! This is a robust email authentication protocol that can protect your domain as well as email recipients from the prying eyes of cybercriminals.
Email domains use DNS to secure communications from eavesdroppers. They aim at preventing phishing, spoofing, ransomware, and impersonation attacks. DNS records also include a DMARC record, which is implemented and configured by the owner of the specific domain with the intention of allowing only authorized entities to send emails from that domain. A DMARC record consists of DMARC policies that instruct the receiving server on how to deal with unauthorized emails sent from your domain. By unauthorized emails, we mean outgoing emails from your domain that didn’t pass the DMARC checks.
DMARC’s purpose of instructing receiving servers on how to handle unauthorized emails from your domain is achieved based on what policy you have set in your DMARC record. While p=reject is undoubtedly the strictest policy, there are conditions in which it isn’t a suitable one.
Phishing attacks have spread over the digital world like a plague. Not only are these attacks frequent, but they are also grave and capable of causing irreparable damage to your brand’s reputation. Not to mention the financial toll; phishing attacks cost companies an average of $4.88 million per data breach.
While DMARC has proven its ability to keep spoofing and phishing attacks at a distance, DMARC records can have errors and misconfigurations. So, if you are seeing multiple instances of false positives, false negatives, delivery issues, etc., then it’s suggested that you check your DMARC record to see if it has issues. This can be done by running your DMARC TXT record through an online lookup tool. You can also come across errors and misconfigurations using penetration testing.
DMARC is based on three policies: none, quarantine, and reject. As a domain owner, you have the choice to apply one of these three policies for illegitimate emails sent from your domain. However, sometimes, receiving servers don’t respect the policy you applied; they adjust the policy according to what seems to be better for the emails sent from your domain.
Microsoft has always encouraged domain owners to deploy DMARC to improve email deliverability and prevent spoofing. It has also been part of industry groups that aim to improve email security standards, demonstrating its endorsement of DMARC as part of the future of secure communication.
Deciphering DMARC reports is complex as it requires understanding the XML structure and key components within the report. You have to analyze the IP address and understand the failures. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how you can go about it.
Lately, DMARC adoption has been reflecting an upward trend, underscoring the increasing awareness about email security, especially after Google and Yahoo’s announcements. Roughly 20 million domains are already using DMARC, although many users are still stuck at the p=none policy, which is like moving two steps forward and one step back.
Google Workspace encourages domain owners to use the three email authentication protocols, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, to ensure outgoing emails are properly authenticated. This reduces the security gaps; otherwise, threat actors can exploit them to send phishing and spoofing emails from your domains. Moreover, from February 2024, Google has mandated DMARC deployment for regular and bulk email senders, urging domain owners or administrators to create a DMARC record in their DNS settings and specifying policies to handle emails that fail SPF and/or DKIM checks.
While most domain owners prefer receiving DMARC aggregate and forensic reports on internal email addresses, some want to have them in external inboxes. Internal email addresses refer to those belonging to the same domain for which the DMARC record is created. For example, if your organization’s domain is example.com, then an internal domain email address would be something like employee@example.com. On the other hand, external email addresses are the ones not belonging to that domain. For example, department@otherdomain.com.
With sophisticated cyberattacks looming over your email landscape, you need to employ the latest techniques that not only protect your communications but also enhance the security posture, and DMARC fits the bill! Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) is an email authentication protocol that helps you do just that! It protects your domains against spoofing, phishing, and other email-based frauds.
Ever since Google and Yahoo rolled out new email-sending policies that mandate organizations that send bulk marketing emails every day to deploy DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance), organizations across the world have been quite proactive in meeting these new standards. The wave of DMARC adoption was such that over 800,000 new DMARC records were created by March 2024. And just like the rest of the world, organizations in Ireland also jumped on this bandwagon.
Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) is a regulation by the European Union that came into force on January 17, 2023. It makes the financial institutions and entities within the finance sector more resilient towards fraud. It strengthens banks, insurance companies, investment firms, and other financial service providers to get back on their feet after major losses and disruptions.
By now, you might have heard a lot about how DMARC reports are crucial for your organization to gain insights into your email traffic and learn how your authentication protocols are waging against phishing and spoofing attempts. They reveal the harsh truth, that is, not all emails claiming to be from your domain are legitimate. While you’re decoding DMARC reports, have you ever looked into the sources of these emails?