How to Set Up DKIM in 3 Simple Steps

How to Set Up DKIM in 3 Simple Steps

Navigating your way through email authentication can be a pretty hectic task.

Complex terms and complicated setups are just a few of the hassles that beginners face. Well, fear not! We’re here to help you understand the email authentication protocol DKIM and a simple three-step guide to set it up.

DKIM DomainKeys Identified Mail or DKIM is an anti-tamper protocol that ensures the security of your emails in transit. The DKIM protocol uses digital signatures to check whether the email was sent by a specific domain.

DKIM uses two actions to validate email messages. The first action takes place on the sending server that sends DKIM signed emails, while the second occurs on a recipient server checking DKIM signatures on incoming messages. This process entirely relies on a private/public key pair.

Your private key is kept secret and safe, either on your own server or with your ESP. The public key is added to the DNS records of your domain to

broadcast to the world and help verify emails. This is done by providing a digital signature for each email.

Once the receiver verifies that an email is signed with a valid DKIM signature, the integrity of the email is proven. Usually, end users cannot see DKIM signatures; the validation is done at the server level.

How does DKIM function?

DKIM adds a digital signature to the headers of an email message. This signature can be validated against a public cryptographic key in the organization’s Domain Name System (DNS) records. In simpler words, a public key is issued as a TXT record for the domain's DNS manager in the DKIM process (registrar of the domain or DNS Provider).

Every outgoing email has its own signature, which is generated using the domain's private key. This private-public key combination is used by the recipient email server to verify all email sources. When an inbound mail server gets an email, it looks up the DNS records to find the sender's public DKIM key. This key is used by the inbound server to decrypt the signature and compare it to a newly computed version. The message can be proven to be valid and integrated during the transit if the two values match.

What are the benefits of DKIM? For email receivers, the key benefit of DKIM is that it allows the signing domain to accurately identify a stream of legitimate emails, making domainbased blacklists and whitelists more effective. It also makes it easier to identify certain types of phishing attacks: Spam filtering DKIM can help identify mail that isn't known to be spam and doesn't need to be filtered.

Compatibility DKIM is compatible with the existing email infrastructure because it is implemented using DNS records and an extra RFC 5322 header field.

Anti-phishing DKIM can be used to protect against phishing attacks. Mailers in phished domains can sign their messages to prove that they are authentic.

Non-repudiation The non-repudiation feature of DKIM precludes senders from denying that they sent an email.

Steps to set up DKIM The DKIM configuration has three significant yet straightforward steps: Generate a domain key for your domain.

Add the public key to the DNS entries for your domain. This key can be used by email servers to validate DKIM signatures in your messages.

To begin applying a DKIM signature to all outgoing messages, enable DKIM signing.

For detailed information check DKIM Setup Guide Original Content Source;-https://webhitlist.com/profiles/blogs/dkim-in-3simple-steps Connect with us: - https://twitter.com/emailauth_io