Why are sources an important aspect of ensuring email security with DMARC?

By now, you might have heard a lot about how DMARC reports are crucial for your organization to gain insights into your email traffic and learn how your authentication protocols are waging against phishing and spoofing attempts. They reveal the harsh truth, that is, not all emails claiming to be from your domain are legitimate. While you’re decoding DMARC reports, have you ever looked into the sources of these emails?

Sources, in the context of DMARC, are the sources and servers that are sanctioned to send emails on your behalf. Your list of sources may include email service providers (ESPs), internet service providers (ISPs), marketing platforms, and other tools that your organization uses to communicate via email.

But why should they be a part of your email security strategy? In this article, we will look at the importance of sources of DMARC and how to update and maintain them.

What are sources?

Sources refer to the various entities that are entitled to send emails on behalf of your domain. This includes any platform/service that is involved in email communication at any level, like the ESP, which facilitates marketing and transactional emails; ISP, which allows you to receive and send emails; and other services like ticketing systems, payment providers, etc. 

Since these platforms are authorized from your end, they fall under the category of trusted sources. On the other hand, there are unauthorized or unknown sources that attempt to send emails without proper authorization. 

What is the role of sources in DMARC?

It goes without saying that you should have a clear outlook of all the entities sending emails under the name of your organization. As a domain owner, you should be aware of who is sending what and ensure that all communications are legitimate and accounted for.

This is especially true when you’re implementing DMARC for your sending domain. By identifying and managing your email sources, you can ensure that only legitimate emails pass through DMARC checks. This involves updating SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) records to reflect all authorized sending entities.

Moreover, when your sources are correctly configured and authenticated, your emails are less likely to be marked as spam by recipient mail servers, thereby boosting your engagement and email deliverability.

How do you create and update sources?

One of the most crucial steps of updating sources in DMARC is curating a comprehensive list of all services and platforms that send emails on your behalf. While we understand that making such a list is a time-consuming and tedious task, the more thorough you are with it, the better your email security will be.

Once you have the list ready with you, add the IP addresses or domains of these services to your SPF record. You also need to configure DKIM for each service and add the public key to your DNS. The important thing to understand with known sources is that they only need to be aligned with either SPF or DKIM to be considered for DMARC check. 

After setting up SPF and DKIM, the next step is to create a DMARC policy for your domain and publish it in your DNS. This policy will instruct email receivers on how to handle emails that don’t pass the DMARC checks.  

What about unknown sources?

For the unknown/threat sources that appear in your DMARC report, it’s essential to assess and address each one carefully. While some of these sources might be illegitimate or spoofed, others could be misconfigured legitimate senders. This usually happens while email forwarding, wherein the mail server rewrites the headers and renders your SPF record invalid. In this case, your primary goal should be to authenticate these sources to improve email deliverability.

To do so, determine whether the source is a legitimate sender that was not previously authorized or updated in your DNS records. If the source is legitimate, update your SPF and DKIM records to authorize it. If it seems like a threat, enhance your defenses by setting the DMARC policy to “quarantine” or “reject”.

How DuoCircle can help you optimize your email security?

Managing sources in DMARC is not just a technical necessity but a strategic step to enhance your domain’s security and reputation. By maintaining, updating, and monitoring both known and unknown sources, you can significantly enhance your domain’s integrity and deliverability.

As important as this process is, it can also be tedious, especially given the vastness of the email ecosystem and the number of platforms that organizations rely on to facilitate their business operations. 

Want to know how to effectively update and manage your sources? Our team at DuoCircle will help you with all things related to DMARC reporting and more! For a deeper dive into effectively managing your DMARC setup and improving your email system’s security, book a demo with us today!