Your Trusted Partner in Enhancing Email Security and Deliverability

AI-Powered BEC Is Rewriting the Fraud Playbook: 10.7 Million Attacks in Q1 2026 and Why CEO Filters No Longer

Fri, 08 May 2026 06:05:30 -0700

Click-to-Open Rate Is the New North Star: How Apple MPP and Automated Flows Have Permanently Retired the Open Rate as Email's Primary KPI

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 05:17:42 -0700

DMARCbis Is Live: What the New np= Tag Actually Fixes

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 04:37:35 -0700

BIMI's Inflection Point Is Real — But the Adoption Gap Tells a More Complicated Story

Fri, 29 May 2026 03:13:24 -0700

The DMARC Enforcement Gap: Why 60–87% of Organizations Remain One Spoofed Email Away from a Breach

Wed, 20 May 2026 04:23:26 -0700

Why collecting DMARC ruf= failure reports is a bad idea under GDPR Failure reports may seem useful for diagnostics

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 02:03:04 -0700

The Impact of DNS Caching on SPF, MX, and DKIM Records

Tue, 04 Feb 2025 02:47:00 -0800

Configuring SPF, MX, and DKIM DNS records is a critical part of ensuring successful email delivery. These records include a TTL (Time to Live) parameter, which tells DNS servers how long to cache their entries. While TTL values are intended to ensure that changes to DNS records propagate within a predictable timeframe, unexpected behavior from some antispam providers can extend the impact of misconfigurations far beyond the TTL limit.

A Real-World Example of SPF Caching Gone Wrong

In one case we observed, Proofpoint, a well-known antispam provider, cached SPF records for longer than their specified TTL. This deviation from standard DNS behavior was likely done for performance reasons, as repeated DNS lookups for cached records can consume additional time and resources.

Our client’s SPF record included an erroneous directive for a short time—perhaps as little as 10 minutes. Despite promptly correcting the error, Proofpoint’s extended caching caused the problem to persist. All emails sent by our client during this period were flagged as failing SPF checks and quarantined by Proofpoint’s antispam system.

Other antispam providers that adhered to the TTL resolved the issue promptly, allowing emails to pass through without further interruption.

This incident underscores several critical points for e-mail administrators:

Handle DNS Records with Extreme...Read More

Technical Parameters to Avoid Being Flagged as Spam

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 04:38:15 -0800

To ensure your emails are successfully delivered and avoid the dreaded spam folder, it’s essential to focus on both technical and content-related parameters. Below is a comprehensive guide to all technical aspects to optimize deliverability:
1. Email Authentication
Authentication protocols verify the legitimacy of the sender and help ISPs trust your emails.
SPF (Sender Policy Framework):
Ensure your SPF record is correctly configured to authorize email servers to send on your behalf.
Example: If your domain is example.com and you send emails via mail.example.com (IP: 192.0.2.1) and a third-party service like SendGrid, your SPF record should be:
v=spf1 ip4:192.0.2.1 include:sendgrid.net -all
This record authorizes these servers to send emails on behalf of your domain
Avoid duplicate SPF records...Read More

Why Are PTR Records Important?

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 23:50:35 -0800

Anti-spam filters are designed to scrutinize the origins of email traffic. One common method is to verify that the sending server has a correctly configured PTR record :
How PTR Records Work
To illustrate how PTR records function, consider the following example:
A server with the IP address 192.0.2.123 sends an email.
The receiving server checks the PTR record for 192.0.2.123 and finds it maps to the domain mail.example.com
The receiving server then performs a forward lookup to verify that mail.example.com. resolves back to 192.0.2.123.
If the forward and reverse DNS records align, it establishes trustworthiness for the sending server.
Best Practices for Configuring PTR Records
Properly setting up PTR records is essential for organizations that manage their own mail servers. Here are three key practices to ensure optimal email deliverability:
Assign a PTR Record for Every Sending IP Address:
Each sending IP address must have a corresponding PTR record that points to a valid domain name.
For example:
123.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa. ---> After seven years of observing organizations struggle with Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) implementations, a clear pattern has emerged. The most common reason for these failures? Difficulty identifying legitimate email sources for authentication.
The DMARC Challenge: Identifying Legitimate Email Sources
DMARC reports are invaluable for understanding how email authentication is performing. However, they are often cluttered with irrelevant data:
Emails relayed by recipients who forward messages to other mailboxes
Spam sent by malicious actors
This noise makes it challenging for organizations to focus on the critical task of identifying legitimate email sources and authenticating them using SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail). Missteps in this phase lead to stalled DMARC projects and incomplete protection against phishing and spoofing attacks.
If you don’t have a DMARC expert guiding your implementation, don’t worry. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you succeed.
Step 1: Identify Obvious Email Sources
Start by analyzing your DMARC reports for recognizable email sources. Common ones include:
Corporate email platforms (e.g., Microsoft 365, Google Workspace)
Marketing platforms (e.g., Mailchimp, Salesforce)
Customer support systems (e.g., Zendesk)
Ensure these sources are properly authenticated.