Emails are simply the backbone of the modern workplace. Over the past few decades, emails have cemented themselves as the main form of communication for lots of different businesses and organisations worldwide — and for good reason. They’re effective, cheap, and robust, and work perfectly in the modern office.

However, with their age comes the complexity of email security. After all, a technology that is now decades old has had to evolve, especially with the rise of cyber threats in that time. One of the most complex parts of email security is counteracting email spoofing — which is essentially email impersonation through your business’s domain.

In this article, we’ll introduce you to an anti-email spoofing technology called DMARC, as well as why you should take a look at implementing it into your business today. We’ll also look at how to do that, so you can ensure that your emails have the best protection available.

Understanding DMARC: A Simple Explanation

Essentially, DMARC is a system that protects your business’s email domains from being used for spam and phishing. It may seem strange that scammers can use your domain — but, spoofing is a well-known email threat.

Spoofers will essentially use the ‘from’ field in an email domain to try to appear as though they’re from your domain. This can be tricky to spot, as it will appear that the email is from the expected sender.

DMARC mitigates this. To put it simply, DMARC checks the email records to verify that the address that the email was sent from matches the email address and domain on the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) records — these records have information about any emails sent. DMARC will then flag any emails that don’t match as spam, making it known that those emails are unsafe and potentially harmful.

Why Your Organisation Needs DMARC

To put it simply, protecting your business from email spoofing is a good thing. After all, it’ll reduce the amount of spam and phishing threats that your business will face, so it’s already a no-brainer to implement DMARC into your business.

However, there are a few other reasons as to why DMARC might be good for your business on top of preventing scams:

  • Reputation: Email spoofing doesn’t just affect your business’s security, but also your reputation. Spoofs can make your business seem less trustworthy — and so using DMARC will help protect your reputation.
  • Deliverability: Most email providers prioritise delivering emails with DMARC, meaning that using DMARC will help your emails become more easily deliverable.
  • Compliance: Some industries have regulatory requirements that will include the utilisation of DMARC, meaning that you need to use DMARC to remain compliant and avoid consequences in the long run.

DMARC is essential if you’re using your own domain. After all, spoofing is built to take advantage of your domain, meaning that you need to take steps to mitigate it. Ultimately, spoofing cannot be stopped, but DMARC is the best way to protect yourself and ensure that you can show yourself as legitimate.

Steps to Implement DMARC

Implementing DMARC may appear like a tricky process, but once you understand how it works, the whole thing becomes far easier. But, you’ll need to learn the ins and outs of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to be able to implement them effectively — the most important part is understanding how these systems work.

  • SPF: Sender Policy Framework is one of the key ways that DKIM identifies email spoofing. Essentially, SPF lets domain owners specify which servers are allowed to send emails on their behalf.
  • DKIM: DKIM is the other half of this, essentially acting as a signature to identify whether the email is legitimately from the sender that it appears to be from.

Altogether, these will act as checks to make sure that the email is legitimate. Then, using this information, DMARC will mark the email as spam or quarantine it — depending on what you’ve set DMARC to do. These systems work together to protect your inbox.

Once you’re technically up to speed, you can follow these steps to implement DMARC into your business:

  • Understand and Plan: Making sure that you know each step of the process inside and out is vital, as configuring DMARC is a multi-step process that includes both SPF and DKIM.
  • Set up SPF and DKIM: These two systems will need to be in place before you can begin working on setting up DMARC.
  • Create a DMARC Record: Your DMARC record will tell your email servers how to handle emails that fail the SPF and DKIM checks, rounding out your protection strategy.
  • Monitor and Adjust: Keeping an eye out and adjusting your DMARC record to ensure that your strategy works best for you is vital after implementing DMARC.

Ultimately, email spoofing is going to happen. You can’t stop it — but these tools mitigate and identify the risk, meaning that you can remain vigilant against these attacks. After all, if you can’t stop them, the next best thing is to make them ineffective and remove the risk involved.

How MSPs Can Help You Stay Secure

DMARC is vital for combating email spoofing, and making sure that you have SPF, DKIM, and DMARC set up to protect your business domain from spoofing is vital in the modern world. With such a versatile and unpredictable risk such as spoofing, it’s so important to be able to take any steps to ensure that you can remove the risk.

If you need help with implementing security measures into your business, reach out to us today. We’ll be able to give you a helping hand and ensure that you have everything you need to keep your business secure.

Get in touch with us now and see how we can help.