Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email authentication method used to prevent email spoofing – a standard method that cyber attackers utilize to send fraudulent emails that seem to come from trusted sources.
SPF serves as a guest list for your email domain. It tells email servers which IP addresses are allowed to send emails on behalf of your domain. An email from an unauthorized source gets flagged as suspicious or sent directly to spam.
A must for email security
- Over 3.4 billion phishing emails are sent daily.
- Implementing SPF can increase your email inbox placement rate by up to 10%.
- Email authentication is increasingly required in most industries for GDPR and HIPAA compliance.
Block the spammers
Think of SPF as a gatekeeper for your email – it filters out each sender before they’re admitted. Without it, you’re opening the gates for spammers to impersonate your brand.
The quote likens the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) to a security checkpoint and highlights its function of authenticating senders before the emails can proceed. Without SPF, cyber attackers could spoof your domain and send deceptive emails that seem legitimate, endangering your brand’s reputation and recipients.
Fighting email fraud
Being one of the top brands spoofed in phishing, PayPal needed a strong email authentication solution to protect its users. PayPal implemented SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, which lowered impersonated email spoofing by a significant percentage.
Using SPF records to authenticate valid mail servers and prevent spammers, PayPal was able to increase email trust and lower phishing attacks by 60%.
Another one of the leading e-commerce titans was facing poor open rates on emails and spam complaints. Their marketing emails were in the spam box due to insufficient SPF authentication.
Having installed SPF and authorized their email sending domains, their inbox placement rate was increased by 15%, and their click-through rate increased by 12% within six months.
Prevent email failure
Challenge: SPF is only ten DNS lookups deep, so if your company uses multiple email service providers, your SPF record will break, triggering email failure results.
Resolution: SPF flattening eliminates DNS lookups by collapsing numerous IPs into a single record. You also get to use the third-party plug-in known as EasySPF to adjust your SPF setting finer.
Set up SPF correctly
- Place a list of the authorized email senders in your DNS settings.
- Incorporate an additional layer of protection in your email security.
- Regularly check for errors with tools.
- Optimize for multiple email services and avoid exceeding the ten DNS lookup limit.
