DMARC ! Factors to be considered ..

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC), is an email authentication, policy, and reporting protocol. It builds on the SPF and DKIM protocols to improve and monitor protection of the domain from fraudulent email.

Factors that need to be considered while taking a DMARC decision

Cloud-based (SaaS) deployment. This eases the burden on company IT teams, allowing for the solution to be easily deployed and configured with out-of-the-box security policies.

Domain diagnosis. This will ensure your business is aware of any domain vulnerabilities, many of which can be common for SMBs to overlook and consequently increase their risk.

User friendly dashboard. This will ensure your team does not need a lot of time to understand how the solution works.

Forensic reporting. This allows for detailed information on why emails may have failed DMARC checks and allow for additional system tuning.

DNS record change tracking. This allows for additional insight into malicious activity

API integration. Large companies typically have internal dashboards and workflows. API Integration with the DMARC solution will allow you to tailor the solution into your enterprise reporting & analysis tools.

A good DMARC solution should clearly identify high-risk sources, forwarders, and common email providers. It should provide actionable next steps in mitigating risk and minimize details until you actually need them. Avoid solutions that don’t show all authentication domains, differentiating between just passing SPF/DKIM and alignment.

Remember that adding a DMARC solution is essentially just adding a reporting address to your policy, so try on a few (or several at a time) if you’re curious about any provider.

Other key consideration

Accuracy: What is the level of completeness for classification of IP’s from the reports of mail senders and subsequent categorization that represent the mail that belongs to my organization?

Insight: The best solutions will have easy to use, staged flows that display recommended actions and contextual guides from the data presented to explain misconfigurations in email authentication. Data needs to be actionable with insight.

Automation: More recent platform solutions for DMARC use hosted management for SPF authentication which allows for expansion past the 10 SPF lookup limit and provides a far more reliable and resilient email delivery. Ongoing automated monitoring with alerting which recognizes changes in authentication, identifies new sources and takes immediate action should be requirements.

Value: How much should I budget and how can total cost and time resources be efficiently managed? Look for automation of defined actions and applying expertise to specifically implement those actions in the best manner for the organization.