Key aspects of DMARC interoperability

Interoperability, in general, is the ability of different systems and components to work together and exchange information effectively. In the context of email security, interoperability means that SPF, DKIM, and DMARC can come together and function in unity to seamlessly authenticate and protect your email-sending domain from getting exploited. Since these protocols are interoperable, there are no contradictions, provided you manage them properly. 

This blog discusses the prime elements of DMARC interoperability. 

1. Graceful handling of edge cases

DMARC allows you to choose from three policy options (none, quarantine, or reject), controlling how you want the recipients to deal with illegitimate emails from your domain. Out of these three, the ‘none’ policy is particularly helpful for edge cases. This is because it allows domain owners to monitor email flows and authentication issues without instructing recipients’ mailboxes to place them in the spam folders or reject them. 

Using the ‘none’ policy is a good fallback mechanism when you are troubleshooting and don’t want the email delivery to take a toll.

2. Compatibility with legacy systems

DMARC has the capability to work with the existing email systems and protocols. So, when you deploy them for legacy systems that do not fully support DMARC, emails are processed based on SPF and DKIM results. 

We suggest you deploy DMARC incrementally, which means start with the ‘none’ policy and just monitoring the email flow. Gradually move to stricter policies (quarantine and reject) to manage compatibility with legacy systems. This phased approach lets you make adjustments based on the feedback received from DMARC reports. 

Although receiving DMARC reports is optional, if you have legacy systems and edge cases, these reports can highlight the related issue. 

3. Semantic interoperability

DMARC follows semantic interoperability by ensuring that its data and authentication results are consistently understood and interpreted across systems and domains. Here’s how DMARC achieves this:

Consistent policy formats

There is a specific format for mentioning DMARC policies in the DNS records. While it’s a bit of a task to learn this format, the standardized format ensures the policy is interpreted correctly across mail servers. This way, you don’t have to worry about how a particular email service provider will decode your DMARC record and the policies mentioned in it.

Alignment and reporting

DMARC requires alignment between SPF and DKIM results and the ‘From’ header of the email. This alignment ensures that the semantics of the authentication results are consistent with the sender’s domain. 

Uniform interpretation of results

Upon receiving an email from your DMARC-compliant domain, the recipient’s server checks the policy and interprets the results of SPF and DKIM as per that. This consistent method of retrieving the policy and interpreting the results makes it possible to work around with just one DMARC record per domain. Imagine the challenges that would come if you had to create different DMARC records for different email service providers!

Final words

In short, the interoperability of DMARC is all about how it’s designed to ensure that the various components or systems work together without conflicts and contradictions, promising smooth and effective email exchanges.