Have you ever received an email from a business or service only to be suspicious of its authenticity? Has someone ever sent you an email that seemed too good to be true?
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) helps ensure the process of sending emails is protected from bad actors. In this post we will explain what it is, why it’s important and some of the issues that may arise.
DKIM uses encryption and decryption of additional signatures in email headers, which requires both public and private keys.
This practice helps protect your brand's reputation by ensuring that emails are sent with integrity. By adding the public key as a TXT record on your server's DNS records, you can verify that all emails sent out by your team are legitimate and not coming from malicious sources.
Different domain hosts have different methods for setting it up. For example, Google Apps users must manually turn it on in their Admin console, while other hosts, such as Microsoft, Zoho, or NameCheap, require different steps.
SPF is a mechanism that allows you to specify which IPs are authorised to send emails from your domain. An SPF Check is a simple validation that the email is sent from an IP you allow, but this alone can’t guarantee the authenticity of a message.
They both offer an important layer of protection individually and they both have their limitations. Implementing the two of them therefore reduces the potential risk of your business being the victim of cybercrime.
It is important SPF is setup correctly to avoid the risk of a vulnerability being taken advantage of.
Recently, Google reportedly made DKIM a mandatory requirement for DMARC after such an event. Our article on SPF will give you some pointers for getting started.
It is also worth mentioning that, DMARC is also necessary for BIMI, which provides you with even more protection.
And with every effort you make to protect your business and your customer information, the better your odds are of reaching the inbox and improving engagement.
DKIM authentications can often fail due to a variety of reasons, such as misalignment between the signature domain and sender domain, an incorrect or non-existent public key, an issue with the sender's domain DNS zone lookup, and also if the length of the key used for signing is too short.
It is especially difficult to avoid failure during checks if auto-forwarding appends footers that change the message body. To address this challenge, major Email Service Providers (ESPs) now use Authenticated Received Chain (ARC) protocol which helps identify mail servers that handled messages before and assess their authentication at each step in handling.
Business owners and entrepreneurs need to understand the importance of DKIM to protect themselves from malicious spoofing attempts. At the same time, while many understand its value, few take the time to set it up properly.
That is where we can help!
At InboxWizards, we offer solutions for all aspects for email authentication settings within your email accounts and with our Domain Check-up feature, you can always be sure that things are running smoothly.
We will make sure that all emails sent are authenticated and secure, increasing email deliverability and protecting your business from malicious attacks.
With more than a decade of experience in the field we understand how important it is for you to protect your domain. Let us show you the power of authentication today.