All You Need to Know About Email Authentication in 2024

Suryanarayan Pal
BySuryanarayan Pal

6 mins read

Since emails are a prime mode of communication not just within organizations, but also between businesses, their customers, and individuals. With so much at stake in these interactions, ensuring the authenticity and security of your emails is essential. Think of email authentication as putting a secure lock over your emails to protect them from being impersonated or forged. Authenticating your email helps you to verify if it is a legitimate email, preventing the risk of unauthorized access to sensitive information, fraud, and phishing attempts.

In this guide, we’ll discuss what email authentication is, its benefits, and the different protocols you must use to authenticate your email address.

What is email authentication?

Email authentication refers to the process of verifying the legitimacy of an email. It uses a set of protocols and techniques to ensure the email is coming from a claimed sender and has not been tampered with during transit. It helps prevent cyber threats like email phishing, spoofing, and other types of fraudulent activities by validating the authenticity of an email’s origin.

Key benefits of email authentication

Email authentication protocols offer a robust solution to combat issues like spoofing and phishing, which threaten both users and brands. Below, we explore the key benefits of email authentication and why it is essential for any organization looking to enhance its email security strategy:

Prevents email spoofing

Email authentication ensures that emails claiming to be from your domain are genuinely from your domain. By specifying mail servers that are authorized to send emails to your domain, protocols such as DKIM and SPF prevent email spoofing.

Improves deliverability

The sender's email addresses that are authenticated are more likely to be delivered to recipients’ inboxes rather than being sent to the spam folder, thus increasing your email deliverability.

Protects brand reputation

Email authentication standards prevent malicious people from using your given domain to send fraudulent emails. This safeguards your brand reputation by ensuring your domain is not associated with spam or phishing attacks.

Enhances security

By making it hard for spammers to forge your domain, email authentication reduces the risk of unauthenticated messages, phishing attacks, and other email-based threats.

Email authentication protocols

The main email authentication protocols include SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance), and BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification). Let’s go over each of these methods in more detail:

SPF

Sender Policy Framework ( SPF) is an email authentication protocol that specifies which email servers are authorized to send emails using your domain. It identifies and prevents email phishing and spoofing.

Take a look at the image below that shows how SPF authentication works. You can also read about SPF checks in detail in our related guide that follows.

SPF process.png

DKIM

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is an email authentication protocol that uses a digital signature to validate the identity of an email sender. It ensures an email was sent from an authorized source and has not been tampered with during transit. DKIM authentication includes a unique message header in the email containing the necessary information for the receiving server to confirm the authenticity of the email.

Take a look at the image below that shows how DKIM record authentication works. You can also read about it in detail in our related guide that follows.

How does DKIM work: A step-by-step explanation

DMARC

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) is an email authentication protocol that uses SPF and DKIM signature checks to perform advanced verification of the received email. It helps domain owners set their email validation policies, instructing servers on how to manage emails that fail DMARC checks.

Take a look at the image below that shows how DMARC works. You can also read about it in detail in our related guide that follows. DMARC guide.png

There's one more added security measure that is closely tied to SPF and DKIM and helps combat phishing and spoofing, and that is BIMI.

BIMI

Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) is an email standard that allows you to display your brand’s logo in your email messages. This visual representation boosts brand trust and helps email recipients quickly identify valid emails from their favorite brands, improving engagement. BIMI is authenticated by a DMARC policy, which stops billions of email impersonation attacks every year.

SPF vs DKIM vs DMARC vs BIMI

Feature Purpose How It Functions Verification Method Protection Against
SPF Confirms the sender’s permission to send the email Creates a DNS record listing authorized servers Receiving server checks the DNS record Spoofed sender addresses
DKIM Confirms the sender’s identity and guards against spoofing Attaches a digital signature to the email header using a private key, with the public key stored in DNS Receiving server verifies the public key in DNS Spoofed sender addresses and email impersonation
DMARC Defines how emails should be handled Establishes a DNS policy for managing emails that fail SPF or DKIM checks Receiving server assesses the DNS policy Spoofed sender addresses and email impersonation
BIMI Displays the sender’s logo in the recipient’s inbox Creates a DNS record that links to an image file Receiving server checks the DNS record Spoofed sender addresses and email impersonation

How to set up email authentication in Mailmodo

To add a new sender to your Mailmodo account, follow the below steps.

Step 1: Navigate to the Settings section in your Mailmodo account and select “Add sender”. Enter the necessary details. An image showing how to set up email authentication in Mailmodo

An image showing how to set up email authentication in Mailmodo: step 2

Step 2: Go to the DNS settings of your domain service provider.

Step 3: Create a new TXT record for each authentication protocol.

Step 4: Copy the DKIM, DMARC, and bounce codes provided by Mailmodo and paste them into appropriate fields as values in your domain name system settings.

An image showing how to set up email authentication in Mailmodo step 3 Step 5: Go back to Mailmodo’s sender settings to verify the domain's dns records for the domain. An image showing how to set up email authentication in Mailmodo step 4

Conclusion

Email sender authentication protects both senders and receivers from the threats of email fraud. By implementing protocols such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, businesses can ensure they receive emails from legitimate sources, improving email deliverability.

If the process of setting up email authentication seems daunting to you, Mailmodo simplifies it for you. With Mailmodo, you can easily configure authentication protocols and send emails securely to protect your company’s enamel communications.

FAQs

Email authentication fails when you have not added or incorrectly configured SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records properly. If the domain reputation is bad, emails can be rejected or will be considered spam by spam filters. Further, if you send emails using a third-party service without proper authentication, the emails seem to come from a “via” domain.

Email authentication mechanisms verify the identity of the sender/recipient of an email to block spam and prevent fraud. It offers protection against email spoofing and phishing scams, improves email deliverability, and ensures the data is delivered safely. It ensures the email is coming from a reliable source and the recipients can trust the message they receive.

Since email authentication methods verify that emails come from a legitimate sender, this reduces the chances of email being marked as spam. Using authentication protocols such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC helps to build a positive sender reputation and ensures your emails reach the designated inbox.

Two-factor authentication enhances your email security by including an extra layer of protection to your existing login process. It combines two forms of identity – password and contact methods such as an authenticator app or OTPs. This helps to keep your account secure and prevent unauthorized people from accessing your account.

What should you do next?

You made it till the end! Here's what you can do next to grow your business:

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Consult an email expert

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Table of contents

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What is email authentication?
Key benefits of email authentication
Email authentication protocols
How to set up email authentication in Mailmodo
Conclusion

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