The cost of cyber crimes is predicted to reach $15 Trillion by 2029. With email being a common target of cybercriminals, using solutions like DMARC can help you protect both your data and finances.
Despite this, only 33.4% of over one million analyzed websites have implemented a valid DMARC record, which leaves the majority vulnerable to email spoofing and phishing attacks. Encouragingly, DMARC adoption has doubled over the past year, increasing from 55,000 to 110,000 new domains per month in 2024. This shows an increasing awareness and appreciation of DMARC’s importance, which will be explored in this article.
What DMARC Is and How It Works
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) is an advanced email security protocol that enhances the protection provided by SPF and DKIM. It allows domain owners to safeguard their email domains from unauthorized use and impersonation.
The DMARC process operates as follows:
Authentication
DMARC leverages SPF and DKIM to verify the authenticity of emails claiming to originate from a specific domain. It performs alignment checks to ensure the “From” address matches the authenticated domain.
Policy Enforcement
Domain owners can specify how receiving servers should handle emails that fail authentication:
- Monitor (p=none): Emails are delivered normally, but the domain owner receives reports for analysis.
- Quarantine (p=quarantine): Suspicious emails are flagged and may be directed to spam folders.
- Reject (p=reject): Unauthorized emails are blocked entirely.
Why Is DMARC Getting So Popular?
Numerous factors make DMARC an indispensable aspect of digital security in 2025:
1. Email Security and Spoofing Protection
Given how common phishing attacks and domain spoofing have become, DMARC serves as an important security mechanism that helps stop hackers from impersonating domains and carrying out successful attacks that could compromise your brand reputation, data, and money.
2. Better Brand Reputation
When your domain is not protected and is vulnerable to unauthorized use, hackers can easily exploit this security gap and put your colleagues, employees, and clients at risk. This can significantly affect your brand reputation and push potential customers and sponsors away. DMARC can help you prevent unauthorized access to your domain, thereby protecting you from domain abuse and loss of reputation.
3. Enhanced Trust
When you correctly implement DMARC, it reassures that your emails are valid and legitimate, and therefore safe to open. As the likelihood of phishing emails from your domain is minimized through DMARC, this can significantly improve customer trust, email deliverability, and open rates.
4. Compliance
In addition to basic security benefits, DMARC also helps ensure compliance with industry regulations and requirements. In fact, from 2024 onwards, not having DMARC correctly implemented may result in your emails getting rejected by several major email providers like Google and Yahoo. The PCI SSC has also made DMARC a requirement for all organizations that deal with cardholder data. Therefore, using DMARC is no longer an optional choice but a necessity. Plus, authenticated emails can reach inboxes in a much faster and easier way, so the requirement only serves your needs!
5. DMARC Helps Avoid Domain Impersonation
DMARC policies, especially strict ones like like p=reject, help prevent phishing and spoofing attacks, which decreases the likelihood of your recipients reporting or blocklisting your business domain.
6. DMARC Can Boost Email Marketing Effectiveness
If you carry our email marketing campaigns and are looking for tangible results and a high ROI, DMARC can help you in this aspect as well.
Making use of DMARC can help boost your email deliverability success rates and thereby contribute to a more rewarding marketing strategy overall.
DMARC for Bulk Senders: Now A Requirement
As already mentioned, in 2024, Google and Yahoo implemented new bulk sender requirements, which have made DMARC mandatory for entities sending over 5,000 emails daily. The main target of this policy is organizations that regularly distribute marketing or promotional content to their customer base. Thus, DMARC has become a crucial tool for safeguarding bulk email campaigns, which helps effectively prevent impersonation attempts that could defraud customers. Failure to implement DMARC, even at the minimal “none” policy level, can result in significant consequences:
- Email deliverability issues
- Increased email bounce rates
- Higher spam complaints
These issues can severely impact a business’s email communication effectiveness. By mandating DMARC, email service providers aim to create a more secure email ecosystem, which can protect both senders and recipients from potential threats.
Potential (Direct and Indirect) Side Effects of Not Having a DMARC Policy
There are many negative implications of not having DMARC, including:
1. Higher Likelihood of Success of Phishing and Spoofing Attacks
When you don’t implement DMARC, do so incorrectly, or use overly permissive DMARC policies, you are at a heightened risk of impersonation. This can make it much easier for phishing and spoofing attacks to successfully reach their intended outcome.
2. Email Deliverability and Brand Reputation Losses
Not implementing DMARC or doing so partially or incorrectly can also negatively affect your email deliverability rates and business reputation. When an attacker tries to exploit weak, unprotected brand domains (like those not having DMARC implemented), this can result in a loss of business reputation. If this happens, even your safe, valid, and legitimate emails might be flagged as spam and your domain might be blocklisted altogether, resulting in lower email deliverability and lower ROI.
How to Implement DMARC
Here are the steps you need to follow to effectively implement DMARC:
1. Start with SPF and DKIM Records
To implement DMARC, you must first set up either SPF or DKIM, though using both is recommended for stronger security and fewer false positives. PowerDMARC simplifies this process with tools to generate SPF and DKIM records. Here’s how to get started:
- Generate Records: Use PowerDMARC’s SPF and DKIM record generator tools to create the necessary DNS records.
- Publish Records: Manually add these records to your domain’s DNS or use online tools for auto DNS publishing (to publish them without direct DNS access).
- Validate Setup: After implementation, verify the accuracy of your records using online SPF and DKIM checker tools.
Ensure both records are correctly configured for optimal results and enhanced email authentication.
2. Choosing the Right DMARC Policy
The configuration of DMARC requires users to have a policy in place. Your DMARC policy can be any of the following:
- none: This helps monitor your email traffic without enforcement.
- quarantine: This policy type serves to flag messages that seem suspicious and/or to put them in the receiver’s quarantine folder.
- reject: This is the strictest DMARC policy which helps stop suspicious emails from being delivered to your receivers.
You can start with a policy of “none,” then gradually move to “quarantine” and eventually to “reject”. This will ensure your transition from permissive to enforced DMARC policy without disturbing your business processes in the meantime.
3. Using a Record Generator
Using a DMARC record generator can help you create a syntactically correct DMARC record even if you don’t have any technical skills, knowledge, or experience in the field. The process brings the likelihood of manual error to a minimum and the possibility of a correct DMARC record to a maximum.
4. Last but Not Least, Reporting!
Once DMARC is implemented, immediately activate reporting to monitor email traffic and identify deliverability issues or suspicious sending sources. DMARC reporting provides valuable insights into your email ecosystem, which can help you quickly detect and address potential security threats.