DMARC Report Received from SendGrid: What You Need to Know
January 31, 2025 | 3 min read
Understanding DMARC Reports from SendGrid
SendGrid is a widely used email platform for transactional and marketing emails, making it critical to ensure that your emails are properly authenticated to protect your domain’s reputation and improve email deliverability. DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) reports from SendGrid provide valuable insights into how recipient servers handle your emails by analyzing SPF and DKIM alignments, helping you monitor and maintain email security.
Key Components of SendGrid DMARC Reports:
1. Source IP Address: This shows the IP address that SendGrid used to send your email. Monitoring this allows you to confirm whether emails are coming from authorized SendGrid IP addresses or from unauthorized sources.
2. DKIM Alignment Results: Verifies if the DKIM signature in the email matches the domain specified in the “From” header. SendGrid supports DKIM signing, which is critical for aligning your emails with your domain.
3. SPF Alignment Results: Checks if the sending IP (typically a SendGrid IP) is authorized by your SPF record to send emails on behalf of your domain. Ensuring SPF alignment is crucial for passing DMARC checks.
4. Disposition: Indicates how the recipient server treated your email (e.g., delivered, quarantined, or rejected) based on the DMARC policy you’ve set for your domain.
5. Message Count: Provides the number of emails that meet certain criteria from a particular IP. This helps track email campaigns or detect potential abuse from suspicious IP addresses.
Automating DMARC Parsing for SendGrid
Given the volume of emails sent through SendGrid, manually parsing DMARC XML reports is both time-consuming and error-prone. Automating this process with tools like Skysnag can drastically simplify and streamline DMARC management.
– Data Aggregation Across Multiple Providers: SendGrid DMARC reports may come alongside reports from other email service providers. Skysnag aggregates all DMARC reports into one unified view, making it easier to manage email authentication across multiple services.
– Visualizing Key Metrics: Skysnag converts the XML data from SendGrid DMARC reports into visual dashboards that highlight critical metrics like DKIM/SPF pass rates, unauthorized email attempts, and top-sending IPs, giving you a clear picture of email security.
– Automated Incident Response: Skysnag provides real-time alerts and automated responses when SendGrid emails fail DMARC checks, allowing you to swiftly address any misalignments or take action on potentially malicious activity.
– Forensic Reporting: Forensic data, such as full email headers from failed authentication attempts, can be included in DMARC reports. For SendGrid users, this information can help trace security issues or improve email delivery performance by resolving issues with failed authentication.
Ensuring Proper DMARC Alignment for SendGrid
To ensure optimal protection with DMARC, it’s important that DKIM and SPF are aligned with the domain used in the “From” header. Misalignment can cause emails to be quarantined or rejected, even if other checks pass. Proper DKIM and SPF configuration in SendGrid is essential for maintaining email deliverability and protecting your domain from spoofing or phishing attempts.
Skysnag’s Custom Solutions for SendGrid:
– DKIM Key Management: Skysnag ensures that your DKIM keys are properly aligned and up-to-date with SendGrid. Any misalignment or outdated DKIM keys are flagged for remediation, ensuring that your SendGrid emails pass DKIM checks consistently.
– SPF Flattening: SPF records can become complex when using multiple services like SendGrid, which can lead to DNS lookup limit issues (maximum 10 lookups). Skysnag automatically flattens SPF records to optimize them and avoid lookup limit problems.
– Policy Recommendations: Based on your SendGrid DMARC report patterns, Skysnag provides suggestions for adjusting your DMARC policy, such as moving from “none” to stricter modes like “quarantine” or “reject” to enhance protection from phishing and spoofing attempts.
By automating DMARC parsing and providing tailored solutions for SendGrid, tools like Skysnag help maintain strong email authentication, protect your domain from abuse, and ensure that your emails are delivered securely and reliably.
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