What is the difference between anti-spam and DMARC?
We understand that spam emails are one of the most annoying things that you have to deal with on a daily basis, both as a user and as an email marketer. They are not just annoying because they take up unnecessary space in the inbox, but they are also a huge security threat. What might seem like an irrelevant but harmless email can be a harbinger of grave cyberattacks. A spam email could be anything: a phishing attack email, a malware scam, or CEO fraud, claiming to come from a reputed domain.
As much as we wish there was a way to completely eradicate these kinds of emails, the best thing you can do is implement security measures to minimize their impact or, better yet, prevent them from reaching the user’s inbox or being sent from your domain.
There are two most common ways to do this. The first one is anti-spam tools, and the other one is DMARC. Someone who isn’t familiar with the intricacies of these protocols might confuse one for the other, but in reality, anti-spam and DMARC are two different email security protocols that primarily serve the same purpose but follow different approaches.
Here’s how anti-spam and DMARC are different from one another.
What is anti-spam?
Anti-spam is a combination of techniques and technologies that come together to keep your inbox free from unwanted and potentially harmful emails. Basically, what these solutions do is analyze the content of the incoming emails, deeply scrutinize the sender’s reputation, and look for any patterns associated with spam emails. Once identified, these emails are then moved to the spam or junk folder of your mailbox. Alternatively, anti-spam also blocks suspicious emails, keeping them out of your inbox.
The primary goal of these solutions is to keep you safe from irrelevant, unsolicited, or dangerous emails. Although they cannot completely filter out spam, they reduce the chances of dangerous emails getting into the inbox, which makes the management of emails easier and much more secure. These tools are particularly important for someone who wants to keep their mailbox clean and free from probable threats that spam emails can impose.
How does it work?
On the surface level, anti-spam solutions rely on algorithms to identify spam emails and mitigate their impact. There’s more to it; they use different types of filters that check emails before allowing them into your inbox. Here’s how these filters work:
- Content filter: The first filter in any anti-spam tool is a content filter that checks the email content for any signs of spam/spam-like messages.
- Header filter: If any email contains any false or misleading information, the header filter spots it.
- Blocklist filter: Anti-spam software maintains a list of well-known spammers, and if the sender of the incoming message corresponds with a name on that list, the email is simply blocked out.
- Rule-based filter: This filter follows the rules that you have set, like blocking all emails from particular senders or emails containing specific words.
- Permission filter: This filter ensures that your inbox is accessible only to those emails whose senders you have previously approved.
What is DMARC?
DMARC is one of the most trusted email authentication protocols, not just by security teams but also by major email providers. DMARC has earned a reputation because of the way it protects your email domain from being used by cybercriminals for phishing or email spoofing. When you implement DMARC, it’s like having a gatekeeper for your email ecosystem. Its job is to ensure that only valid emails authorized by you are being sent on your behalf. That is to say, when someone tries to send an email that claims to have come from your domain, DMARC steps in to check whether the email is sent by an authorized sender and no one has tampered with it in transit. If not, the email is flagged, sent to spam, or even blocked entirely, depending on the policy you’ve set.
How does it work?
DMARC adds an extra layer of security to your defense mechanism by ensuring that only authorized emails are sent from your sender domain. To make this happen, the email should comply with at least one of the two authentication protocols— SPF or DKIM. Here, SPF verifies that a message is sent from an authorized server, and DKIM ensures that the email hasn’t been tampered with along the way. If an email passes these checks, it’s delivered normally. If it fails, DMARC will determine whether to deliver, quarantine, or reject the email based on the DMARC policy you have configured.
Apart from protecting your domain, DMARC also sends out comprehensive reports about how your emails are being treated by the receiving servers. The reporting feature gives you insights into important information, like if there’s someone trying to misuse your domain, if your current email security measures are working effectively, or whether or not to make changes in your security strategies. With this information, you can fine-tune your email security to keep spam emails from deceiving your recipients under the garb of your name.
What are the distinguishing factors between the two?
While there isn’t any difference in what anti-spam and DMARC do, they differ vastly in approach and how they are implemented. Since their approaches are so different, how they tackle spam emails and protect your email environment also differs significantly. While one (anti-spam) relies on algorithms and patterns to verify that your inbound emails are filtered and sorted, the other (DMARC) ensures that the messages that go from your domain are secure. In the case of anti-spam, the responsibility of security is in the hands of the receiver. They will have to turn it on to make sure spam emails don’t enter their inbox. As for DMARC, the domain owner/sender enables it to ensure that cyberattackers do not exploit their domain to send phishing emails.
Additionally, the added protection against the vast range of cyberattacks, such as outbound phishing, spoofing, ransomware, CEO fraud, etc., that DMARC provides isn’t something that anti-spam tools are designed to handle. Not to mention, the reporting capabilities of DMARC give this protocol an edge over anti-spam tools. This feature provides valuable insights into who is trying to misuse your domain and how often these attacks are happening.
Want to leverage the DMARC reporting feature to make the most of your email security strategy? Book a demo with us today!
