No More Hit and Miss: Why DMARC is Crucial for Email Deliverability

Even with so many advanced technical forms of communication, email remains the most popular means for organizations, marketing departments, communicating with clients, collaboration among co-workers and even communicating with a friend. So, it is important that emails reach their intended targets.

Even with the addition with high-tech antispam solutions, with phishing emails and email spoofing attacks, ensuring that your email reaches your audience does at times feel like a game of hit and miss especially for email Marketers.

Domain based Message, Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) is an email authentication protocol that give us the ability to restore or maintain a healthy domain reputation which is needed to have good email deliverability. This ability is major because anyone can take full control of their email deliverability without any restriction from anyone. I am going to share information to help you better understand DMARC and the steps you can take to implement it.

What Email Deliverability Is Dependent On

The following must be considered whenever we talk about email deliverability:

• Antispam Filters: Scans your email’s content to detect the likelihood if it is spam or not. This trigger is based on a score that your email gets based on the words and sometimes the type of links in your email.
• Phishing or Spoofing: Cybercriminals can modify the headers of emails to make it look like it came from another source for example, you. Your email recipients will then believe you sent them that email when in fact it was the cybercriminal, resulting in them giving out private information or thinking it was you, clicking a link and instead downloaded a malware.
• Domain Reputation: Impacts on your email deliverability and reflects how your domain has been used to send emails. If you send unsolicited emails, recipients can report your domain as sending spam which will give your domain a bad reputation and therefore affect negatively your email deliverability.

Not properly managing these challenges will result in bad email deliverability which means your recipients will miss emails, leading to delays in communication and misunderstanding, unhappy clients, and possibly loss of financial opportunities. DMARC empowers us to take back control and better manage our email deliverability.

DMARC gives us a mechanism that empowers and enable us to verify the validity of emails that look like they came from us and communicate the result to receiving email servers, so they know whether to accept or reject.

DMARC Combines SPF and DKIM:

1. SPF (Sender Policy Framework): Lists servers or services that you want to send emails for your domain.
2. DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): Adds a special digital signature to emails which helps the recipient’s email server, check if the email was changed after it was sent.
3. DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance): Creates rules on how receiving email servers should respond to your emails. These rules take into consideration your domain’s SPF and DKIM records and determine if emails should be send to the inbox or junk folder or reject.

Signs DMARC Improves Deliverability

DMARC when configured correctly offers the following advantages:

• Improved Deliverability: There are some email servers that only accept messages from email addresses whose domains have DMARC implemented, which communicates that you take your email security seriously.
• Prevents Domain Spoofing: Once DMARC is implemented, it will help to prevent domain spoofing which protects your customers or persons you know, against email impersonations.
• Compliments Email Security Solutions: DMARC compliments other email security services, in some cases those services require DMARC implementation before adding their service.
• Benefits of DMARC Report: A part from enforcing SPF and DKIM, DMARC reports provides information about email authentication failures, helping you identify potential issues and improve your email practices or helps you identify if there is a continued attempt to spoof your domain allowing you to take potential steps to file a complaint.

The Steps Involved in Deploying DMARC

1. SPF and DKIM are required: Since DMARC uses your domain’s SPF and DKIM records, they must first be configured and working properly.
2. DMARC Record: Your domain’s DMARC is a DNS record that you add it specifying the policy you want and the reporting email.
3. Monitor First: After your DMARC record is added, set the policy to "none" (p=none) to monitor the senders of email using your domain. This will allow you to see all the senders both those you have and unauthorized senders. This policy only provides information and does not impact on your email’s deliverability.
4. Reviewing Your DMARC Reports: After few days of setting up your DMARC record with the “none” policy and reporting email, you may start receiving DMARC reports which you can review to see all senders using your domain. This will allow you to identify any unauthorized senders who you will later set to be quarantined or rejected and authorized senders whose SPF and DKIM records have not been added.
5. Enforcing Your DMARC Policy: Once you are satisfied that all authorized senders have been added to your SPF record or there DKIM records added you may set a policy signaling to receiving email servers to either quarantine or reject any email sending domain that does not have a SPF or DKIM record or fails both SPF or DKIM records. It is a good idea to start with the policy "quarantine" (p=quarantine) to send suspicious emails to the junk folder, and later enforce the "reject" (p=reject) policy to block all unauthorized emails.

Where DMARC Can Make a Difference

• Banks: Banks including other types of financial institution will use DMARC as one of their ways to protect their customers against phishing emails where a cybercriminal seeks to steal personal or financial information.
• Agencies: Government agencies would use DMARC as one of many ways to protected against false official emails that could be used to spread misinformation.
• Schools: Schools and universities should use DMARC as one of their ways to protect students, staff, parents and supporters from phishing emails that may seek to either misinform or cause damage.

DMARC Tips

• Configure DMARC for Subdomains: If you have a subdomain that sends email, you will need to configure a separate DMARC record which means you would also have a SPF and DKIM records which are unique to it. For example: A university’s computer department may have “compsci.university.com”
• Third-Party Tools: Use available tools online such as mxtoolbox and others to validate your DMARC record ensuring that it is configured correctly.
• Analyze Your DMARC Report: Paid DMARC subscriptions provide reporting within their portal. If you do not want to pay for a DMARC subscription, you are still able to Analyze your DMARC Report.

Conclusion

Email is still the most important form of communication, and even with so many persons losing trust in it because of spam and phishing. Small business owners and school administrators can make sure their email deliverability is not negatively affected by implementing DMARC to restore or maintain that trust protecting your email recipients from spoofing.

DMARC also provides important reports on senders who send on your domain’s behalf so that you are aware of any possible issues for authorized senders and can also identify unauthorized senders.

While it requires planning and effort, DMARC can be implemented without recurring expenses using our howTo: Deploy DMARC on a $0 Budget guide, which offers, step-by-step instructions on how to implement DMARC without the recurring cost involved which usually have additional features so if you only want to implement DMARC, this guide which is a part of our paid subscription where you will receive other howTo: guides will be right for you.

For additional tips and resources, consider subscribing to our FREE MasadaOffensive Guide or our premium MasadaOffensive Mastery monthly or annual plan for exclusive guides and advanced strategies to strengthen your cybersecurity.

Take control of your email deliverability today—start with DMARC and build trust with those who matter most.