OFFphish

What Is DMARC ?

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) is vital in the combating spam, phishing, and spoofing.

• DMARC outlines authentication practices and actions for failed authentication, safeguarding email senders and recipients from advanced threats.
• DMARC notifies recipients of protected messages and guides email handling to defend against impersonation fraud.
• Paired with SPF and DKIM, DMARC verifies sender legitimacy and ensures email authenticity.

What is DMARC for ?

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) is a technical standard that helps protect email senders and recipients from sophisticated threats that can cause email data leaks. The DMARC email security system allows domain owners to define authentication methods and actions to be taken if an email fails authentication. DMARC also allows recipients to report emails that have failed authentication.

DMARC benefits businesses by providing another layer of protection that guards against attacks like impersonation fraud, where an attacker uses a legitimate domain to send a fraudulent message.

Defend against spoofing with DMARC email security

Sending fraudulent emails from a legitimate domain is one of the methods cybercriminals use to trick users into revealing confidential information or transferring money to fraudulent accounts. DMARC email security protocols can help prevent this type of attack by allowing senders to notify recipients that their messages are protected by SPF and/or DKIM authentication, and by providing instructions on what to do if an email fails either of these authentication methods.

Essentially, the DMARC email security system eliminates the need to guess how recipients handle failed messages, minimizing the recipient’s exposure to potentially fraudulent emails and helping to protect the sender’s domain from being used for fraudulent purposes.

Although DMARC email protection can be very effective in preventing certain types of attacks, cybercriminals are adept at finding numerous ways to breach an organization’s security system. That’s why many companies turn to OFFphish for solutions that combine DMARC email protection with other highly effective, multi-layered defenses.

DMARC compared to SPF and DKIM

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email authentication protocol used to verify the legitimacy of a sender’s domain by specifying the IP addresses that are allowed to send email from that domain. DMARC is an authentication protocol based on the SPF standard that allows domain owners to specify how emails that fail authentication should be handled.

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is another authentication protocol that allows senders to sign emails with their organization’s domain name, guaranteeing the authenticity of the message. Like SPF, DMARC is based on the DKIM standard, allowing senders to specify how messages that fail authentication should be handled.

DMARC is a protocol for verifying that an email sent from an organization’s domain is a legitimate message and not a fraudulent one.

DMARC records and DMARC domain alignment

The DMARC record appears in the sender organization’s DNS database. DMARC records, published as text (TXT) resource records (RR), determine what the email recipient should do with mail that has not passed authentication. DMARC domain alignment is part of the DMARC compliance process. For SPF, domain alignment requires that the From domain and the Return-Path domain of the message match. For DKIM, domain alignment means that the From domain and the DKIM signature of the message must match.

Learn more about the DMARC authentication standard and how OFFphish uses DMARC, SPF, and DKIM to provide advanced protection against malware such as phishing and other targeted attacks. Subscribe to our articles.

DMARC benefits companies by providing them with an additional layer of protection against attacks such as impersonation fraud.