DMARC Policy

Defend against domain spoofing with a DMARC policy

As the number of impersonation and spoofing attacks continues to rise, many organizations are turning to DMARC policy and protocols to stop these malware-less attacks.

In a spoofing attack, a cybercriminal sends an email that appears to come from someone in your company in an attempt to trick the recipient into transferring money, revealing credentials or sharing sensitive information. Spoofed emails may target your own employees and customers as well as suppliers and partners.

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance, or DMARC, is a protocol for authenticating email that can put an end to spoofing attacks. DMARC builds on the SPF and DKIM authentication protocols that are currently widely used. By establishing a DMARC policy, organizations can let receiving email servers know how to validate messages from their domain and what to do with email that fails to authenticate.

While DMARC can provide a critical layer of protection against spoofing attacks, implementing the DMARC protocol and establishing DMARC policy can be costly and complex, and managing and analyzing DMARC reporting on an ongoing basis can be time-consuming. It's no wonder, then, that so many organizations adopting DMARC policy turn to Mimecast for help in implementing and managing the DMARC protocol.

A simpler way to establish DMARC policy

To simplify deployment of DMARC protocols and establishment of DMARC policy, Mimecast DMARC Analyzer provides a 100% SaaS-based solution that reduces the time and complexity of enforcing DMARC authentication. DMARC analyzer includes:

• Management of unlimited users, domains and domain groups to easily achieve full coverage.
• Forensic reports that streamline the task of tracking down malicious email sources.
• Easy-to-digest aggregate reports and charts for faster analysis and DMARC policy enforcement.
• Fast and easy updates to DNS records with a setup wizard for DMARC records.
• Options for DMARC Office 365 configuration.
• The ability to track progress over time by reviewing summary daily and weekly reports.
• Two-factor authentication to enhance security.
• Proactive email prompts that are issued when a DNS record changes.
• A managed service option that delivers deployment and project management expertise proven to help reduce risk and enforcing DMARC policy in the shortest time possible.

FAQs: What is a DMARC policy?

What is DMARC?

DMARC – or Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance – is a protocol for email authentication, policy and reporting. Designed to help prevent email impersonation, DMARC allows senders to let recipients know that messages are protected by Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Message (DKIM) protocols and provides instructions for how to handle messages that don't pass either of these authentication methods.

What is a DMARC check?

DMARC enables receiving mail servers to check for alignment between the domain names in the "header from" and the "envelope from" information in an email using SPF authentication, and between the "header from" domain name and the "d= domain name" in the DKIM signature. If a message fails both SPF and DKIM authentication and alignment, a receiving mail server can perform a DMARC check of the sender's DMARC policy to determine whether the email message should be accepted, blocked or quarantined.

What is a DMARC record check?

In order to implement DMARC, organizations need a valid DMARC record. A DMARC record check is a tool that displays an organization's DMARC record while testing and verifying it to determine whether it's valid. Mimecast offers a free DMARC record check service that will test and parse a DMARC record and display it along with additional information.