Domains used for sending emails should have a corresponding DKIM record that validates the signatures in each official email. This provides clear validation of legitimate emails and helps identify spoofed messages.
A crucial aspect of email security and deliverability is the proper creation and management of SPF and DKIM records. A DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) record offers a signature validation mechanism that shares a public key for verifying signed emails. This public key is used to confirm the signatures of emails sent from your domain, enabling them to be cryptographically signed and distinguishing legitimate emails from those that might be spoofed.
For instance, when an email is received from your domain, the receiving email server can look up the DKIM record for your domain in your DNS records. The server uses the public key outlined in the DKIM record to verify the email’s signature, utilizing asymmetric key encryption to ensure that the email originated from a valid source and that its content remains unaltered. Any email with a valid DKIM signature can be confidently recognized as legitimate, while those with invalid signatures are likely considered spam or spoofed.
The impact of this validation is significant. Emails sent from your domain can be reliably identified by receiving email servers as legitimate. This improves your domain’s reputation, as genuine emails are far less likely to be flagged as spam, while illegitimate ones can be more easily identified and quarantined or rejected without confusion. This separation prevents spam or spoofed emails from harming your domain’s reputation and enhances overall email deliverability, ensuring that your communications with customers and email-dependent services are reliable and effective.
Before implementing DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), it’s essential to confirm that your email servers or email service provider can generate and maintain a reliable DKIM record and the required supporting technology such as valid email signing. Your email server must supply a public key and ensure that every outgoing email is signed with the corresponding private key. This ensures that all emails sent from your server or service provider will successfully pass DKIM checks.
Your email service provider should confirm support for DKIM and provide the complete DKIM record set, which is managed as a TXT record in DNS services like AWS Route 53. Without a properly configured DKIM record, you will not be able to provide the public key required for mathematically validating that emails sent from your legitimate service provider are authentic. Once completed, your domain will be capable of signing and validating outgoing emails, which will then be checked back to your provided DNS record successfully completing the DKIM implementation.
To detect which of your domains and subdomains lack DKIM configuration SkySiege Cloud Assessments can scan all your cloud accounts to find which subdomains lack full configuration:
SkySiege Cloud Security Assessments scan for this issue and provide same-day reports..
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