DMARC
What is DMARC?
DMARC, or Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance, is an email security standard that helps domain owners prevent email spoofing by telling receiving mail servers how to handle messages that fail authentication checks.
Examples
- A company publishes a DMARC policy so fake emails pretending to come from its domain are rejected by receiving mail servers.
- A security team reviews DMARC reports to see which legitimate services are sending email on behalf of the company domain.
Discover 🔎
Email is one of the most trusted communication tools in business, which also makes it one of the most abused. Attackers often send messages that look as if they came from a real company, bank, or colleague. If the receiving system cannot reliably tell the difference between legitimate mail and a spoofed message, users may trust dangerous emails that were never truly sent by that domain.
DMARC was created to reduce that problem. It gives domain owners a way to publish instructions for how receiving mail systems should treat messages that claim to come from their domain but fail authentication checks. In other words, it helps organizations protect their domain name from being misused in email fraud.
Summary 📝
DMARC is an email authentication standard that helps domain owners reduce spoofing by publishing a policy for how failing messages should be handled. It builds on SPF and DKIM, adds alignment and reporting, and gives organizations both stronger protection and better visibility into how their domain is used in email. Its greatest value is helping protect trust in a domain’s email identity.
Tip: The interactive version includes progress tracking, decks, and premium deep dives.