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Results for
SPF
DKIM
DMARC
MTA-STS
BIMI
SPF Sender Policy Framework
DNS Record:
Without SPF:
- Email spoofing: Anyone can send emails pretending to be from your domain. Attackers can impersonate your CEO, your support team, or any employee to trick customers and partners.
- Phishing attacks on your contacts: Criminals can send convincing phishing emails to your clients, vendors, and employees that appear to originate from your domain, stealing credentials and sensitive data.
- Domain reputation damage: When spoofed emails are sent from your domain, spam filters begin flagging all email from your domain — including your legitimate messages — reducing deliverability.
- Blacklisting risk: Widespread spoofing can land your domain on email blacklists (Spamhaus, Barracuda, etc.), causing your real business emails to bounce or be rejected entirely.
- No foundation for DMARC: SPF is one of the two authentication mechanisms that DMARC relies on. Without SPF, your DMARC policy has only DKIM to work with, weakening your overall email security posture.
DKIM DomainKeys Identified Mail
Without DKIM:
- Message tampering goes undetected: Emails can be altered in transit — an attacker between your server and the recipient can change links, attachments, or message content without either party knowing.
- No proof of authenticity: Receiving servers have no way to verify that an email was actually sent by your mail server. There is no cryptographic link between the message and your domain.
- Increased spam scoring: Major providers (Gmail, Microsoft 365, Yahoo) use DKIM as a trust signal. Unsigned emails receive higher spam scores and are more likely to land in junk folders.
- DMARC alignment failure: DMARC requires at least one of SPF or DKIM to pass and align. Without DKIM, forwarded emails (which break SPF) will always fail DMARC, causing legitimate mail to be rejected.
- Mailing list and forwarding breakage: When emails are forwarded or sent through mailing lists, SPF often breaks because the sending IP changes. DKIM survives forwarding — without it, forwarded emails from your domain will fail authentication.
DMARC Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance
DNS Record:
Without DMARC:
- No enforcement on spoofed emails: Even if you have SPF and DKIM, receiving servers have no instructions on what to do when those checks fail. Spoofed emails may still be delivered to inboxes.
- Zero visibility into abuse: DMARC aggregate reports (rua=) show you every server sending email as your domain. Without DMARC, you are completely blind to unauthorized use of your domain for phishing or spam.
- Business Email Compromise (BEC) exposure: BEC attacks — where attackers impersonate executives to request wire transfers or sensitive data — are far more effective when your domain has no DMARC policy to stop spoofed sender addresses.
- Brand and customer trust erosion: When customers receive phishing emails that appear to come from your domain, they lose trust in your communications. This directly impacts customer relationships and revenue.
- Cannot achieve BIMI: BIMI (brand logo in inboxes) requires a DMARC policy of p=quarantine or p=reject. Without DMARC, you cannot display your brand logo next to your emails in Gmail, Yahoo, and Apple Mail.
- Insurance and compliance risk: Many cyber-insurance policies and compliance frameworks (PCI-DSS, NIST, HIPAA-adjacent) now expect or require DMARC enforcement. Lacking it can affect coverage or audit results.
MTA-STS Mail Transfer Agent Strict Transport Security
DNS Record:
Policy File:
Without MTA-STS:
- TLS downgrade attacks: An attacker positioned on the network path (e.g., a compromised ISP, rogue Wi-Fi, or nation-state actor) can force the sending server to fall back from encrypted TLS to plaintext SMTP, exposing the full email content.
- Email interception and surveillance: Without enforced encryption, emails travel in plaintext between mail servers. Sensitive data — contracts, invoices, credentials, personal information — can be read by anyone who can observe the traffic.
- DNS spoofing of MX records: An attacker who poisons DNS can redirect your inbound email to their own server. MTA-STS pins the MX hostnames and requires certificate validation, preventing this type of mail hijacking.
- Regulatory non-compliance: Regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, and various financial-sector requirements mandate encryption of data in transit. Email without enforced TLS can be a compliance gap, especially for organizations in healthcare, finance, and legal sectors.
- False sense of security with opportunistic TLS: Without MTA-STS, TLS between mail servers is “opportunistic” — it is attempted but never required. A single failed TLS negotiation (or an active attacker) silently falls back to plaintext with no notification to sender or receiver.
BIMI Brand Indicators for Message Identification
DNS Record:
Without BIMI:
- Generic inbox appearance: Your emails appear with a default avatar or blank icon — identical to spam, unknown senders, and phishing attempts. Recipients have no visual way to distinguish your brand from an impostor.
- Lower open rates: Studies show that brand logos in the inbox increase open rates by 10% or more. Without BIMI, your marketing and transactional emails compete for attention without the visual advantage of your trusted logo.
- Reduced customer trust: Consumers increasingly expect visual verification. Without your logo displayed, recipients may hesitate to open or engage with your emails — especially in industries like banking, healthcare, and e-commerce where phishing is common.
- Missed competitive advantage: Competitors who implement BIMI will have their brand logos displayed next to their emails while yours shows a generic icon. This creates a perception gap in professionalism and trustworthiness.
- No incentive to maintain strong DMARC: BIMI is the tangible, visible reward for enforcing DMARC at p=quarantine or p=reject. Without it, organizations often lack motivation to move beyond monitoring-only (p=none), leaving their domain vulnerable to spoofing.
Not sure what to do with these results?
IPM Computers specializes in domain configuration. Our team can configure SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MTA-STS, and BIMI for your domain so your email lands in the inbox — not the spam folder.
Contact IPM Computers →
