How does the DMARC record work?
The DMARC record explained.
The short acronym DMARC stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance. It is a mechanism, which provides the email receivers and senders to define if a particular message is legitimately from the sender. And also, what action to follows if it isn’t. The DMARC record helps recognize more easily phishing, and spam messages received in the users’ mailbox. It also assists in keeping these emails away from there.
How does it work?
The DMARC record can work in perfect symbiosis with DKIM and SPF. These three elements can operate together wonderfully. They are acting to authenticate an email and define what they should do with it. Basically, the DMARC record of the sender directs a recipient through the following steps. In cases when a suspicious email is pretending to be from a particular sender. For example, to do nothing, to reject it, or quarantine the message. So let’s see the steps of how it operates.
First step: You, as a domain owner, have to publish a DMARC DNS record at your DNS hosting provider.
Second step: An email is sent by your domain, or someone spoofed your domain. The receiver mail server will check to view if your domain holds a DMARC record.
Third step: The mail server then makes SPF and DKIM authentication. Also, arrangement inspections to test if the sender is indeed the domain it assumes it is.
- Do the message headers pass domain arrangement tests?
- Is the sender’s IP address inside authorized senders in the SPF record?
- Does the email hold a suitable DKIM-Signature, which is valid?
Step four: After receiving SPF and DKIM results, the mail server is able to implement the sending domain’s DMARC method. This method simply states:
- What should I do? If the report is that failed SPF/DKIM inspections. Reject, quarantine, or do nothing to the email.
Step five: Finally, when you decide what to do with the message, the receiving mail server will deliver a report about the result for this email. For all other emails that come from the same domain, you will receive a notice. Such reports are named DMARC Aggregate Reports. They are sent to the specified email address in the DMARC record for that domain.
Why do you need a DMARC record?
The DMARC record serves to resist malicious email methods. They can place your business at risk. So, the advice is to add this protocol. No matter if you own an e-commerce site or you operate with offline sales, you use email as the main communication. It includes interaction with customers, suppliers, and employees.
Remember that unsecured messages are an easy target to become spoofed. The number of sophisticated attackers is increasing. They are discovering new ways to implement a diversity of email scams.
The DMARC record assists receivers and senders in working together. Their goal is to achieve better safeguard email. And also decrease the count of phishing, spoofing, and spam practices.