DMARC Protocol

Online businesses and marketing have become one of the most important aspects of the digital world. This means that the companies work and interact with their customers over the web. Since, there is no physical interaction between the client and the employees in online businesses, the primary source of attracting customers is through the trust which is built. However, this trust can be affected if any sort of mishap takes place which damages the brand's name. one of the most lethal threats to an online company is when a fake email id is sent through the enterprise's domain. It is known that online businesses send marketing and transactional emails to customers therefore the customers are familiar with the domain of the emails. However, at times hackers use a company’s email domain to send fraudulent or scam emails to customers. The purpose of such emails is to hack the receiver's accounts or transfer viruses into their software. therefore, to protect the brand name and customers and protect the company’s reputation, it is important to put safety layers to protect from any sort of fraud and blackmailing.



There are several security hacks that the companies can make use of to ensure that their company stays safe from such scandalous issues. SPF (sender policy framework), DKIM, and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) are the security protocols that are set up in the domain zone to prevent anyone from using the domain of the email to send out scam or malicious emails. Where the SPF is used to put together all the IP addresses in a form or index that are allowed to send emails through the certain domain id of a website or company whereas, DKIM is a signature policy that validates the authenticity of the sender by comparing the signatures. However, another integral email authentication protocol is DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) which is used to get the most security for the online companies and marketing firms. DMARC is put in the DNS zone which adds an extra layer of security of the email authentication which sends out the malicious emails to quarantine or report the messages if they do not pass through the previous filters (SPF and DKIM). After this is done, a report is generated on the recipient’s side, which is used by the DMARC report analyser to analyze if the certain domain is being used to send out fraud, scam, or blackmail emails.

There are agencies that are hired by the online websites to set up the DMARC protocol which can allow them to prevent their domains from being in malicious activities. The DMARC report analyser is quite beneficial as they save the company’s name and reputation from being affected due to some unauthenticated hacker. The agencies not only help the companies in setting up the email authentication protocol but also provide management and support services. These services help the websites in understanding how the hackers make their way by using the company’s domain. The awareness allows the web enterprise to be more aware of the illegal activities that can take place.