Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) compliance is essential for securing your outbound emails. By implementing DMARC, you protect your email domain from spoofing, impersonation, and phishing attacks, ensuring only legitimate emails are sent from your domain. This not only safeguards sensitive information but also maintains your brand's integrity. Automated tools like Skysnag simplify achieving and maintaining DMARC compliance, ensuring robust email security for your business.

DMARC explained: Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) is an email security protocol designed to protect email domains from being used in cyber-attacks like phishing and spoofing.

Originating from the collaboration between various industry stakeholders, DMARC builds on existing protocols like DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) and Sender Policy Framework (SPF). By verifying email senders and aligning them with their domain policies, DMARC enhances email authentication and safeguards the reputation of email domains. Implementing DMARC protection is crucial for organizations to ensure their emails are legitimate and secure.

Major email service providers Google and Yahoo recently made the protocol mandatory for bulk senders in an effort to make inboxes safer worldwide. The new requirements demonstrate an increasing need for a standardized solution as misconfigured or nonexistent authentication systems continue to allow threat actors to evade detection and leverage the legitimate reputation of third parties.  

DMARC is a powerful tool that allows email administrators to confidently identify and stop certain spoofed emails; however, more organizations must implement the standard for it to reach its full potential. The success and effectiveness of DMARC is dependent on broad adoption of the standard – by organizations of all sizes.  

Achieving DMARC compliance involves several critical steps to ensure that emails sent from your domain are authenticated and trustworthy. Here’s a breakdown of the key DMARC requirements you need to follow:

1. DMARC Policy in DNS: You must publish a DMARC policy in your DNS. This policy tells receiving mail servers how to handle emails that fail DMARC checks. Initially, a monitor-only mode (p=none) is recommended to gain insights into your email traffic.

2. SPF and DKIM Configuration: Your emails must pass DMARC alignment through SPF or DKIM:

1. SPF (Sender Policy Framework): Ensure the sending IP address aligns with the domain in the email’s “from” address.

2. DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): The DKIM signature must match the domain in the “from” address, making it a more reliable method, especially for forwarded emails.

3. PTR Records: All sending IP addresses must have PTR records, also known as reverse DNS records, to verify the legitimacy of the sending server.

4. Regular Monitoring and Reporting: Utilize tools to regularly check your DMARC records and monitor compliance. Automated tools like DMARC inspectors and record wizards can assist in creating and publishing DMARC records.

5. Anti-Spam Measures: Adhere to anti-spam guidelines such as ensuring recipients have opted in, maintaining low spam complaint rates, and providing a one-click unsubscribe option by June 2024.

6. Email Formatting: Ensure emails comply with standards such as RFC 5322 to avoid delivery issues.

DMARC compliance is crucial for ensuring the security and integrity of your organization's email communications. By adhering to DMARC requirements, companies can prevent email spoofing, phishing, and other forms of email-based attacks that can compromise sensitive information and damage a brand’s reputation.

Implementing DMARC brings significant benefits. For example, it protects against business email compromise (BEC), where attackers impersonate senior executives to trick employees into transferring funds or divulging confidential information. By verifying that emails are legitimately from the claimed sender, DMARC helps block these fraudulent attempts.

Moreover, DMARC compliance enhances email deliverability. Emails that fail DMARC checks are flagged or rejected by receiving servers, reducing the risk of legitimate emails being marked as spam. This ensures that critical communications reach their intended recipients, improving overall business operations and customer trust.

For companies handling payment card information, DMARC PCI compliance is vital. DMARC helps prevent latest phishing attacks targeting financial transactions, thereby supporting broader PCI compliance efforts. This not only secures transactions but also protects customer data from cyber threats.

DMARC safeguards against email-based attacks, improves email deliverability, and ensures regulatory compliance, ultimately protecting an organization's reputation and customer trust. By implementing and maintaining DMARC, businesses can secure their email channels and mitigate the risks associated with email fraud.

Ensuring DMARC compliance is essential for protecting your email domain from spoofing and phishing attacks. Here are the steps to ensure you’re compliant:

1. Create a DMARC Record: Start by generating a DMARC record for your domain. This record is a TXT entry in your DNS settings. The record specifies your DMARC policy, which tells receiving mail servers how to handle emails that fail DMARC checks. Ensure you include required tags such as v=DMARC1, p=none, rua, and ruf.

2. Implement SPF and DKIM: To pass DMARC, your emails must align with either SPF or DKIM:

1. SPF (Sender Policy Framework): This verifies that an email comes from an authorized IP address. Configure SPF by listing your sending IP addresses in the DNS.

2. DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): This ensures the integrity of the email by adding a digital signature. Set up DKIM by generating a key pair and publishing the public key in your DNS.

3. Perform a DMARC Record Check: Use a DMARC record checker tool to validate your DMARC setup. Tools like DMARC Record Checker can quickly retrieve and analyze your DMARC record from the DNS, showing any errors or issues with the configuration. Regularly performing a DMARC record check ensures your settings are correct and up to date.

4. Review DMARC Reports: After implementing DMARC, start receiving DMARC reports. These reports provide insights into your email traffic, showing which emails pass or fail DMARC checks. Use this data to identify and fix issues with your email authentication.

5. Gradually Enforce DMARC Policy: Begin with a p=none policy to monitor your email traffic without affecting delivery. Once you are confident that legitimate emails are passing DMARC, move to stricter policies like p=quarantine and eventually p=reject.

6. Work with a DMARC Service Provider: Consider partnering with a DMARC service provider to simplify and automate the process. Providers offer tools and expertise to help you achieve and maintain DMARC compliance, ensuring ongoing protection against email-based threats.

Regularly performing DMARC record checks and reviewing DMARC reports are crucial steps in maintaining compliance. These practices help ensure your domain’s email authentication is correctly configured and effective in preventing spoofing and phishing attacks. Using a record checker tool frequently can help you stay ahead of potential issues and keep your email communications secure.

Darktrace has developed a fundamentally different approach to email security, one that doesn’t learn what’s dangerous from historical data but forms an in-depth understanding of each organization and its users.

Darktrace / EMAIL focuses on individuals - how each person uses their inbox and what constitutes “normal” for each user - in order to detect what’s not normal. Our AI technology builds profiles for every email user, including their relationships, tone and sentiment, content and link sharing patterns, and thousands of other signals.

Because Darktrace understands the human behind email communications rather than knowledge of past attacks, it can stop the most sophisticated and evolving email security risks like generative AI attacks, BEC, account takeover, supply chain attacks, data loss, and ransomware.  

To learn more about Darktrace / EMAIL read our Solution Brief.