Table of contents
The importance of DMARC
Spam messages accounted for 53.95 percent of e-mail traffic in March 2020. During the most recently measured period. Despite its ubiquity, the global e-mail spam rate has actually been decreasing: the global annual spam e-mail rate in 2018 was 55 percent, down from 69 percent in 2012.
Spear phishing is effective: despite deploying traditional security solutions, 85% of organizations have suffered from phishing attacks. These attacks are everywhere, and most organizations will encounter them at one point or another. It’s also costly: Of those experiencing attacks over the last 12 months, 81% suffered some negative impact as a result, with an average financial cost of $1.6 million—and some losses in the tens of millions of dollars.
Publishing a DMARC record protects your brand by preventing unauthorized parties from sending mail from your domain. In some cases, simply publishing a DMARC record can result in a positive reputation bump.
Using DMARC reports increases visibility into your email campaigns by letting you know who is sending mail from your domain.
DMARC helps the email community establish a consistent policy for dealing with messages that fail to authenticate. This helps the email community to be more secure and trustworthy as a whole.
DMARC helps you stay out of your recipients’ spam folder.
DMARC increases customers’ confidence in your brand. When they see that you take email security seriously, they know you care about their information's privacy.
DMARC was an important aspect of modern IT security hygiene in 2018, and U.S. government adoption will likely help spur wider adoption by enterprises worldwide.
How does DMARC affect email deliverability?
You can improve your email’s deliverability with DMARC by:
Publishing a DMARC record
By placing a DMARC record, a domain owner requests ISP’s (who support DMARC) to send feedback on the emails which they receive for that domain. This indicates receivers that this domain is serious about improving their email authentication.Using the DMARC results to improve the authentication results
The DMARC reports show which sources and IPs send out emails on behalf of a domain and provide insight into the SPF and DKIM verification results. With these results, a domain owner can start to improve the SPF and DKIM verification. By improving their email authentication, a domain becomes more trustworthy and may lead to ISPs being more willing to place emails in the receiver's primary inbox.Enforcing the DMARC policy
The DMARC policy can be enforced in small steps to quarantine and eventually to a 100% reject policy. Enforcing the DMARC policy will reduce the impact of malicious emails sent on behalf of the domain. It also shows ISPs that the domain owner put a lot of effort into securing the email channel so receivers can rely on emails originating from their domain. This can lead to ISPs being more willing to place emails in the primary inbox and can help to improve domain reputation.