How to diagnose DMARC failures using DMARC reports?
Summary
What email marketers say8Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Reddit suggests using a DMARC analyzer tool to parse and visualize DMARC reports, making it easier to identify patterns and sources of authentication failures.
Email marketer from SparkPost explains that DMARC reports help differentiate between authorized and unauthorized sending sources, enabling domain owners to take action against malicious actors while ensuring legitimate mail is properly authenticated.
Email marketer from EasyDMARC shares that DMARC reports help identify instances where attackers are spoofing a domain by sending emails that fail DMARC checks, allowing domain owners to take action against malicious senders.
Email marketer from an Email Deliverability Forum suggests analyzing DMARC reports to validate if your SPF records are correctly configured and include all legitimate sending sources.
Email marketer from Mailhardener shares the importance of having a valid email address in your DMARC record, and explains how to generate DMARC reports and what to do with them.
Email marketer from EmailSecurityPals shares that filtering DMARC reports by failure type (e.g., SPF fail, DKIM fail) can help pinpoint specific authentication issues that need to be addressed.
Email marketer from Postmark shares that analyzing DMARC reports helps pinpoint why emails fail authentication, such as SPF not aligning with the domain in the 'From' address or DKIM signatures not verifying.
Email marketer from Proofpoint recommends cross-referencing the IP addresses in DMARC reports with threat intelligence databases and network logs to identify malicious sources and potential phishing campaigns.
What the experts say4Expert opinions
Expert from Email Geeks explains that the data for email rejections due to DMARC failures is in DMARC reports.
Expert from Spam Resource explains that common DMARC failure scenarios include misconfigured SPF records, DKIM signatures not aligning with the 'From' domain, and forwarding emails that break authentication.
Expert from Email Geeks shares that by searching DMARC reports for Gmail and failures, one can identify SPF/DKIM strings and originating IPs to determine if the issue is unauthenticated mail or domain forging.
Expert from Word to the Wise shares that DMARC policies can significantly impact mailing lists by causing messages to be rejected or quarantined if the list's forwarding practices break SPF or DKIM authentication.
What the documentation says5Technical articles
Documentation from DMARC.org explains that DMARC reports provide aggregate data about email authentication results, allowing domain owners to identify authentication failures and potential abuse.
Documentation from RFC 7489 explains the XML schema used for DMARC aggregate reports, including details on authentication results, policy applied, and source IP addresses.
Documentation from Agari highlights that Forensic DMARC reports show detailed insights for all messages, including the full email headers and message content.
Documentation from Microsoft explains how to view and interpret DMARC reports within the Microsoft 365 Defender portal to identify authentication failures and potential phishing attempts.
Documentation from Google Workspace Admin Help explains that DMARC aggregate reports show the percentage of messages that passed and failed DMARC authentication, allowing administrators to identify sources of authentication issues.