How Is DMARC Records Different From SPF And DKIM?

How Is DMARC Records Different From SPF And DKIM?

SPF or Sender Policy Framework is a DNS text record that contains a list of servers (users) that should be considered authorized or allowed to send an email on the behalf of that specific domain.

Incidentally, the fact that SPF is a DNS entry can also consider a way to enforce the fact that the list is authoritative for the domain since the owners/administrators are the only people allowed to add/change that main domain zone.

DKIM (Domain-Keys Identified Mail) should be instead considered a method to verify that the message content is trustworthy, meaning that the content or message inside the email wasn’t changed or broken from the moment it left the initial mail server. This additional layer of trustability is achieved by an implementation of the standard public/private key signing process. DKIM  contains two key, one of the keys is Public DKIM Key when it’s added to DNS entry it will help the receivers to verify that the message DKIM signature is correct. while on the sender side the server will sign the entitled mail messages with the corresponding private key.

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) empowers SPF and DKIM by stating a clear policy which should be used about both the aforementioned tools and allows to set an address which can be used to send reports about the mail messages statistics gathered by receivers against the specific domain.

All these tools rely heavily on DNS and luckily their functioning process after all the setup phase is finished


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