Back in the days when SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) was designed, it lacked any authentication techniques. Over time, threat actors started misusing email communication channels as they were only protected by passwords, which are easy to breach. As emails became one of the common attack vectors, companies felt the need to devise a solution…
Has it ever happened to you that you sent an email, but it never reached the recipient despite doing everything right? You authenticated your email-sending domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, but somehow, your emails aren’t getting through. Well, one of the reasons behind this could be that your authentication protocols aren’t correctly configured, particularly…
Email security has seen many developments over the years. Starting in February 2024, Google and Yahoo made it mandatory for bulk senders to implement SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to combat the growing menaces attempted through phishing and spoofing. Now, Yahoo Japan has also taken a step further in the same direction— it has made it…
DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) is a Europe-based framework explicitly designed to establish regulatory compliance for the finance sector. This act has been in force since January 2025. Though DORA and DMARC are not directly linked with each other, DMARC helps in DORA compliance by improving the email security posture. DMARC is an email authentication…
You would be surprised to know that as many as 3.4 billion emails are sent by threat actors every single day around the globe to gain illegitimate access to sensitive user data. That’s precisely why email authentication plays a significant role in safeguarding your business email communications by securing your domain from phishing and spoofing…
It’s common for legitimate emails to be falsely marked as spam or rejected because they failed the SPF verification checks. While this is not a one-off occurrence, it does leave room for missed conversations, which can lead to reputational and financial damages. SPF is a strong tool against phishing and spoofing emails sent from your…
SPF is the email authentication protocol that allows domain owners to specify which mail servers they officially allow to be used to send emails on behalf of a domain. Wildcarding in SPF is done using the ‘*’ mechanism. It matches any domain or IP that doesn’t explicitly match other mechanisms in the record. Wildcarding usually…
A broken SPF record means there is some issue in it; either it’s misconfigured, incomplete, or exceeds the technical limits. Such an SPF record fails to perform its responsibility of checking if the email sent from your domain is authenticated. This may also disrupt the flow of legitimate emails from your domain, leaving security gaps…
An SPF record includes the servers and IP ranges a domain owner allows to be used to send emails on behalf of their brand. It’s composed of syntaxes, primarily categorized as SPF mechanisms, SPF qualifiers, and SPF modifiers. The combination of these syntaxes lets domain owners clearly convey how they want the receiving servers to…
RFC 5322 includes the syntax for Internet email headers. This means it does not say anything directly about how SPF should be configured and maintained. However, we know SPF works in conjunction with the email headers defined in RFC5322, particularly the ‘MAIL FROM’ and ‘Return-Path’ headers. It’s true that SPF’s job is to verify the…
