Email is essential for conducting business, but its efficiency relies on deliverability. What happens when emails sent from your domain are marked as spam or, worse, bounce back? When this occurs, the following email you send could be from a domain used by a hacker to impersonate your organization. In addition to the financial cost of a communication breakdown, this scenario may cause irreparable damage to your organization's reputation. One way to prevent this is by implementing DMARC. In this article, we will highlight the importance of DMARC, inbox delivery, focusing on its role in email deliverability and how to execute a DMARC implementation plan to help your organization achieve greater security and protect against email fraud. 

Inframail's email infrastructure solution can help you achieve your goals by simplifying DMARC implementation and monitoring your progress. 

Table of Content

• What is the Importance of DMARC in Email Security?

• How Does DMARC Email Authentication Work?

• How to Set Up a DMARC Record

• Start Buying Domains Now and Setup Your Email Infrastructure Today

What is the Importance of DMARC in Email Security?

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) is an email authentication protocol that helps businesses protect their email domains and prevent spoofing. DMARC works with two other mechanisms: 

• Sender Policy Framework (SPF) 

• DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)

Together, these help verify that an email message is actually from the sender it claims to be from. When a recipient’s email server gets a message from your domain, DMARC checks to determine whether the email aligns with your domain’s SPF and DKIM records. If there’s a match, the email is authenticated. If not, DMARC policies determine the fate of the email. 

Why is DMARC Important? 

Spammers and phishers have a lot to gain from compromising user accounts. Malicious actors can easily access their victims’ money before they are even aware they’ve been scammed by gaining access to: 

• Passwords

• Credit card information

• Bank accounts

• Other financial instruments

Email is a desirable and common target, especially for spoofing. Inserting the logo of a well-known brand into an email can trick some recipients into believing they’ve been sent a legitimate communication. DMARC works to solve this problem at scale. 

How DMARC Complements SPF and DKIM to Enhance Email Security

Realistically, free email services like Google, Yahoo, or Hotmail can’t inspect every email that passes through their servers to determine which ones to allow and which may be fraudulent. SPF and DKIM records can help, but these processes have limited scope. When used with DMARC, these protocols help senders and receivers collaborate to better secure emails. 

DMARC records are an essential part of protecting yourself and the people you send emails to. In addition to protecting your domain from unauthorized use, DMARC can allow you to determine who’s using your email domain to send unauthorized emails.

The Three Major Benefits of DMARC 

DMARC provides three significant benefits: security, reputation, and visibility.

Security

DMARC protects customers and benefits the email community. DMARC helps the email ecosystem become more trustworthy and secure by establishing a consistent policy for dealing with unauthenticated emails. 

Reputation

DMARC protects brands by serving as a gatekeeper. It prevents terrible actors from spoofing your domain and sending out emails that appear to come from your brand. Publishing your DMARC record can boost your reputation. 

Visibility 

DMARC gives you more insight into your email program at a high level, revealing the identity of everyone who sends emails from your domain. 

DMARC Adoption Rates 

DMARC is supported by Microsoft Office 365, Google Workspace, and other popular cloud-based solutions. Since 2010, DMARC has been a part of the email authentication process. It aimed to make it more difficult for cybercriminals to send spam emails from a valid address, helping combat the phishing epidemic. 

Industry experts encourage small business and enterprise domain owners to create a DMARC record to provide instructions for protecting their email domains. This, in turn, helps preserve the brand’s reputation and identity. Many businesses still need to learn how to set it up and find it hard to manage and monitor their configurations.

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• SPF or DKIM
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• Email Sender Reputation

How Does DMARC Email Authentication Work?

DMARC works with SPF and DKIM, two other email authentication protocols, to help email receivers determine whether an email is legitimate or potentially harmful. SPF (Sender Policy Framework) allows domain owners to specify which IP addresses are authorized to send email on behalf of their domain. If an email is sent from an unauthorized IP address, SPF fails. DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) adds an encrypted signature to the headers of outgoing emails. 

This signature helps receivers verify that an email was sent and authorized by the domain owner. When an email arrives at its destination, the receiver can check the SPF record of the sending domain and the DKIM signature to see if both pass. DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) builds on these protocols. It allows domain owners to publish a DMARC record on their DNS that tells receivers how to handle emails that fail SPF and DKIM authentication, improving email deliverability and protecting against spoofing attacks.

What Is a DNS Record, and How Does It Relate to DMARC?

To fully understand how DMARC works, you must realize a DNS record. You must also learn how email authentication protocols like SPF and DKIM help make emails safer because DMARC relies on these established protocols. DNS means Domain Name System. 

It’s a key part of the Internet that translates domain names like “getvero.com” into their equivalent IP addresses that machines can read. For getvero.com, for example, it’s 96.126.108.187. A DNS server is a type of computer server that manages domain names and their associated records. A domain’s DNS record contains essential information about a domain, and email authentication protocols rely on this record.

The Role of SPF in Email Authentication

SPF: This stands for Sender Policy Framework. It’s an email authentication protocol to prevent spammers from sending messages on behalf of your domain. SPF allows you to publish a list of mail servers from which you send emails as a record on your DNS. With an SPF record, you’re telling email receivers (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) that an email is not from a server on my SPF record and should be treated as if it’s not from my organization. 

The Role of DKIM in Email Authentication

DKIM: It stands for Domain Keys Identified Mail. It’s another email authentication protocol that allows email receivers to verify that an email was sent and authorized by the owner of that domain. It does this by adding an encrypted digital signature to the email header, which signifies to the receiver that an email has not been tampered with.

Why SPF and DKIM Alone Aren't Enough

You may think, “If SPF and DKIM already authenticate emails, why does anyone need DMARC?” The problem with email authentication is that current protocols either have loopholes that can be exploited or are held back by incorrect configurations. 

For example, SPF is easy to fool because it authenticates an email by checking for an SPF record at the domain’s DNS record instead of just the domain the email claims to come from. So if someone sends an email from spammer.com but spoofs the email, people see the “from address” as domain.com. SPF will check spammer.com for the SPF record, and unfortunately, it will match because the spammer controls it. 

The Limitations of SPF and the Role of DKIM in Modern Email Authentication

Domain mismatches can happen even in legitimate emails when a mailbox rule forwards a message from another domain. So, it’s hard for email receivers to differentiate between legitimate and scam emails using SPF. 

DKIM is safer… if your organization uses it. DKIM, on the other hand, is a much safer authentication protocol. Not every organization has both DKIM and SPF authentication enabled. Even those who do may not have all their email-sending accounts verified. So when an email receiver like Gmail receives an email that claims to be from a company, it doesn’t know if it’s a scam, improperly configured, or an unauthenticated account. 

The Ease of Email Spoofing and Why SPF and DKIM Alone Aren't Enough

After just a few minutes of web research, I spoofed an email from the getvero.com domain name to show how easy it is to falsify an identity with email. Since Vero has both SPF and DKIM authentication, Gmail immediately marked the email as spam. Unfortunately, not all email receivers are that smart. Also, the fact that an email is in your spam folder gives it a slight chance of being retrieved. A few minutes on the Internet is all it takes to steal an identity through email. 

How DMARC Helps Email Authentication

This is where DMARC steps in. It doesn’t only check whether an email is authenticated with SPF and or DKIM. Still, it helps businesses specify what to do with emails that fail these authentication protocols. With DMARC, a company can tell email receivers to reject any email that’s not authenticated automatically. 

For example, the electronic signature company DocuSign has a DMARC reject policy. So when I tried sending an email to myself with their domain, it didn’t even end up in the spam folder. Gmail had rejected it instantly. 

How DMARC Email Authentication Works

DMARC fits in existing inbound email authentication processes. It helps receivers determine if a message aligns with what it knows about a sender. If the message doesn’t align, the receiving server can check the DMARC record for guidance on handling the unaligned message. Here’s an example of this flow for a receiver that uses SPF, DKIM, and its spam filters (a typical setup): 

• A user writes and sends an email. 

• The sending server inserts a DKIM header. The sending server sends the email to the receiver. 

• The email passes through standard validation tests (IP blocklists, rate limits, reputation tests, and so on). 

• The receiving server retrieves verified DKIM domains based on the header, an “envelope from” via SPF, and applies DMARC policies, passing the email through, quarantining, or rejecting the email and sending a report to the sender’s server. 

Key Validation Steps in DMARC and Its Growing Adoption Among ISPs

Put another way, we can say that at this point, the receiving server is seeking a “yes” answer to 3 key questions: 

1. Does the DKIM signature validate? 

2. Did the message come from an accepted IP address, according to the SPF record? 

3. Do the message headers show the correct domain alignment? 

The email passes through anti-spam filters and undergoes other standard processes. In this way, DMARC satisfies several requirements at a high level: 

• Fewer false positives

• Robust authentication reporting

• Reduced phishing

• Working at a high-capacity scale 

While not all receiving servers perform a DMARC check before allowing a message to get through, major ISPs typically do. DMARC adoption is growing. 

Your DMARC Record

Along with your DNS records, your DMARC record is published and available for anyone online to view. In this section, we’ll go over how you can review a domain's DMARC record and what the parts of the record mean. 

Checking and Decoding a DMARC Record

Checking a domain for a DMARC record can be done from the command line of a terminal window. For example, dig txt dmarc.mailchimp.com. As an alternative, DMARC.org provides a list of other commercial companies offering DNS record lookup and parsing, including tools for reviewing DMARC. 

Here is Mailchimp’s DMARC record: 

v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:19ezfriw@ag.dmarcian.com; ruf=mailto:19ezfriw@fr.dmarcian.com 

The DMARC record is stored as a TXT record at the DMARC subdomain of mailchimp.com. It displays several pieces of information about the domain that will influence how an email sent from this domain is treated by receiving email servers. 

The Parts of a DMARC Record 

v=DMARC1 

The receiving server looks for the v=DMARC1 identifier when it scans a DNS record for the domain sending the message. If the receiving server does not find this tag, a DMARC check will not run. 

p=reject, p=none, p=quarantine

The p here is “policy.” Domain holders can select from 3 policies to advise the receiving server on what to do with mail that doesn’t pass SPF and DKIM but claims to originate from your domain. 

• p=none tells the receiver to perform no actions against unauthenticated mail but to send email reports to the mailto address listed in the DMARC record. 

• p=quarantine tells the receiver to quarantine unqualified messages (for example, by sending them straight to a junk or spam filter instead of an inbox). 

• p=reject tells the receiver to deny unqualified mail. Only verified emails will make it through to an inbox. Mail that is rejected is simply denied entry. 

rua=mailto 

This section tells the receiving server where to send aggregate DMARC reports. The reports include high-level information about DMARC issues but could be more detailed. 

ruf=mailto

Like rua=mailto, ruf=mailto tells the receiving server where it can send forensic (detailed) reports about DMARC failures. These reports are sent to the domain administrator in real-time and include details about each incident. 

fo=

This section displays one of several values related to forensic reporting options: 0 generates reports when all authentication mechanisms fail to produce a DMARC pass result, 1 generates reports when any mechanism fails, and d generates reports if DKIM signatures fail to verify s generates reports if SPF fails. 

sp= 

When an optional sp= value is listed in the DMARC record, it tells the receiving server whether it should apply DMARC policies to subdomains. 

adkim=

As an optional value, adkim= sets the DKIM alignment to either s (strict) or r (relaxed). Strict means the DKIM portion will pass only when the d= field in the DKIM signature matches the from address exactly. The relaxed setting allows messages to pass the DKIM portion if the DKIM d= field matches the root domain of the sender’s address and is implicit if adkim= is not specified in the record. 

For example, in relaxed mode, mail.mailchimp.com, mx1.mail.mailchimp.com, and mailchimp.com would all align, as they share the same organizational domain (mailchimp.com). In strict mode, each can only align with themselves (mailchimp.com would only align with mailchimp.com). 

ri=

You might also see the ri= value when examining a DMARC record. This value sets the interval for the preferred frequency of aggregate reports as listed in rua=mailto.

aspf= 

Another optional value, aspf=, sets the strictness required for SPF alignment to either s (strict) or r (relaxed). Strict means that SPF will align only when the Mail From domain (also called the SPF from, envelope from, or bounce address) matches the header from (also known as the “friendly from”) exactly. The relaxed setting allows SPF to align if the Mail From domain and header from domain share the same organizational domain. 

For example, when aspf is set to relax, mail.mailchimp.com, mx1.mail.mailchimp.com, and mailchimp.com would all align, as they share the same organizational domain (mailchimp.com). In strict mode, each can only align with themselves ( mailchimp.com would only align with mailchimp.com). 

pct= 

Using this optional value allows a domain owner to test the impact of their DMARC on sending by setting a percentage of how many emails are sent with a particular policy. This can be useful when implementing DMARC to measure the difference in email delivery success for emails sent from your domain. 

For example, p=reject; pct=50 means that 50% of emails are subject to the strictest policy, while the remaining 50% are subject to the following strictest policy (quarantine, in this case.)

Related Reading

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How to Set Up a DMARC Record

1. Create a DMARC Record to Fit Your Policy

Creating a DMARC record is the first step in implementing DMARC for your domain. You can write one yourself or use a tool like the DMARC generator to help you. This free tool simplifies the process and walks you through the parameters of a DMARC record. You can select which tags you want to apply and their values through a user-friendly interface. 

It then generates a DMARC record you can use in your DNS. It’s recommended that you start your DMARC policy at no later date. Until you get a handle on who sends emails in your organization, this allows you to set up SPF and DKIM authentication on those accounts properly. Note that the rua and ruf tags are set to their addresses; you’ll have to point this to the address where you want to receive the reports. 

2. Add Your DMARC Record to Your DNS

Once you have your DMARC record, add it to your DNS. This involves creating and filling a new TXT record with your DMARC record.

3. Monitor Your Email Activity and Adapt Your DMARC Policy

You won’t set your DMARC policy to “reject” right away. Instead, you’ll start with a “none” policy and gradually work up to a “reject” policy. Why the slow approach? Setting a DMARC policy to “reject” straight away can cause deliverability failures that could happen if email authentication isn’t correctly set up. 

Here are the phases for the DMARC setup. 

Set DMARC Policy to “None”

As stated earlier, it’s recommended to begin with a DMARC policy set to “none.” This prevents deliverability failures if email authentication isn’t correctly set up. 

A DMARC Policy Set to “None”

This allows you to monitor emails from first- and third-party sources sent on your behalf. It also reports email authentication failures, some of which might be from legitimate sources, so that you can fix them. 

Set DMARC Policy to Quarantine

It’s recommended that you set a policy to quarantine a small percentage of emails that fail authentication, for example, 10% or 15%. When you place your DMARC policy to quarantine, you indicate to inbox providers that it should be treated as suspicious if an email fails authentication. In most cases, these emails are sent to the spam folder, but it’s ultimately up to inbox providers to choose how to handle them. 

This can be done by changing your DMARC record to p=quarantine; pct=10. Starting at 10% allows you to check whether DMARC implementation affects your email deliverability rates. If it is, only a small percentage will be affected, not all of them. As you become more confident that your organization’s emails are authenticated, you can slowly raise the percentage of quarantined emails. 

Set DMARC Policy to “Reject”

As you continue to get reports from DMARC about what legitimate email sources are unauthenticated, you can start fixing them. Once your legitimate email sources are authenticated, you can set your policy to reject (p=reject;) and remove the pct tag entirely.

DMARC Limitations

DMARC is a robust technique for reducing the likelihood of email spoofing and phishing, but it does have a few limitations. One of the most significant is that it can’t combat spear phishing attacks using Display Name Imposters (DNI), which make up many email fraud attempts.

Also, DMARC is unable to protect against look-alike domain spoofs. To protect against email fraud, DMARC should be used with other protocols.

Key Validation Steps in DMARC and Its Growing Adoption Among ISPs

DMARC is also complex. Companies with extensive IT talent pools have an advantage here. Many resources are available to teach anyone how to deploy DMARC. It may be a significant time commitment, but domain owners who want to mitigate vulnerabilities in their email systems will find it worthwhile.

It’s hard to say how many organizations will ultimately use DMARC, though the numbers are growing steadily. Considering that most successful data breaches originate with email, it’s clear that we’ll all be better off when DMARC usage is widespread.

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Start Buying Domains Now and Setup Your Email Infrastructure Today

Inframail is changing how cold email infrastructure works by providing unlimited inboxes at a flat rate. The company offers: 

• Microsoft-backed deliverability

• Dedicated IP addresses

• Automated technical setup 

It scales its cold email outreach efforts efficiently:

• Agencies

• Recruiters

• SDRs  

Using Inframail’s service, clients can automate: 

• SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setup

• Use dedicated email servers

• Access priority support for up to 16 hours daily. 

Unlike traditional providers that charge per inbox and leave you wrestling with technical configurations, Inframail streamlines the entire process. We handle complex infrastructure setup while you focus on reaching more prospects. 

InfraMail provides a robust email infrastructure without technical headaches and per-inbox costs. Whether you’re: 

• An agency looking to scale outreach

• A recruiter connecting with candidates

• An SDR driving sales 

Automated DMARC Setup: What’s the Big Deal?

DMARC is key to email deliverability and security, ensuring only legitimate senders can reach a given inbox. In a nutshell, DMARC (which stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) helps email providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook verify that emails come from the domain they claim to come from instead of an impostor domain created by hackers to steal information or deploy malware. 

When you set up DMARC for your email outreach, you help protect your sender’s reputation, improve deliverability, and prevent unauthorized use of your domain. With Inframail, you won’t just get DMARC support. Instead, we automate the entire setup process so you can start sending cold emails with a clean slate and improved security.