Is That Email Really From Your Business?
Is That Email Really From Your Business?
Your business email address carries your name and reputation. If someone sends a fake message that looks like it comes from your company, a customer may trust it enough to click a bad link, share information, or pay a fraudulent invoice.
SPF, DKIM, and DMARC help protect your email domain, the part of your address after the @ sign. Think of them as three checks that help receiving email services decide whether a message claiming to be from your business is legitimate.
SPF checks who is allowed to send. Your business lists the email services authorized to send messages for your domain. When a message arrives, the receiving service can check whether it came from an approved source. This matters if your team uses more than one tool to send email, such as Microsoft 365 and a newsletter service.
DKIM checks the message’s digital signature. Your email service adds a signature that the receiving service can verify. That check helps confirm that signed parts of the message have not changed along the way.
DMARC checks the name people see. It checks whether a passing SPF or DKIM result matches the domain shown in the message’s From address. DMARC also lets your business publish instructions for handling messages that fail this check and receive reports about them.
These checks work together to make it harder for someone to impersonate your domain. They do not stop every phishing email. A criminal could still use a lookalike domain or a compromised real account. But without SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, your business leaves a useful layer of protection on the table.
If you are unsure whether they are set up correctly, have your email administrator or technology provider check. The records need to account for every service that sends email for your business, or legitimate messages may have trouble reaching customers.
