DMARC: The Basics of DMARC

DMARC stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance. It’s an email security standard that helps prevent spammers from sending unwanted emails. For DMARC to work, it is essential to have a DMARC record published in the DNS records of the domain. DMARC protects against the 2 biggest threats in email security, i.e Spoofing and Phishing. As the owner of a brand or a domain one can finally get control over which senders are legitimate, or allowed to send email on their behalf. This includes bulk sources or third parties who are permitted to send email using a domain.

What Is DMARC?

DMARC is a simple yet powerful technology that allows webmasters to specify what type of messages should be treated as legitimate and what type should be treated as spam. This helps reduce the number of false positives (messages marked as spam) and false negatives (messages not marked as spam).

Why Should You Care About DMARC?

If you receive email messages with links to your website, you need to make sure that those emails aren’t being flagged as spam by your email provider. Spam filters are designed to identify spam based on certain characteristics, such as the sender address, subject line, and body text. However, these filters often misidentify legitimate messages as spam.

What Does DMARC Do?

DMARC helps prevent your email from being identified as spam by using an Email authentication protocol called Domain Message Authentication Reporting & Conformance (DMARC). This protocol allows you to specify what actions should be taken when a message is received from a particular domain. You can use DMARC to tell your email service provider whether to accept messages from a particular domain, reject messages from a particular domain because they contain malware, or even send a warning message to users who try to open a malicious link in an email message.

How Can I Implement DMARC?

To implement DMARC, you need to set up a policy file with the following settings:

• Action: Specify what type of action to take when a message is sent from a particular domain.
• Report URI: Specify where to report any errors that occur during the authentication process.
• SPF record: Specify the IP address(es) of the mail servers used by the sender.

What Are Some Best Practices For DMARC Implementation?

If you use Google Apps for Business, you can easily configure DMARC using the Admin Console. You can also use the API to automate the configuration of DMARC.

EmailAuth Suite is one of the world's best platform for Email Authentication and has been serving customers since the introduction of DMARC in 2012.