Security Protocols and Risks Associated with the Usage of the Internet
The twenty-first century is the century of the internet, with the commercialization of this, there has been a tech revolution all over the world. It has impacted all segments of life, from large corporations to small scales businesses, everybody is getting benefit from this. The role of the internet has increased a lot in recent times. As this has become necessary to have the internet for commercial use, companies all over the world are now using specific domains for communicating within and outside the companies. This is now part of the professional routine for companies to have their very own domains. This looks more professional and in this way, they have more choices available. However, there are some other aspects and facts also associated with this. The domain of the company can be misused by hackers, as they can use the official emails for their gains.
The working mechanism of SPF
This is getting necessary to have very strict control over the domain and other networks being in use by companies. As technology is developing and more people are now getting in the circle of the internet, there are some bad people also there. For securing the official domains, there has been term SPF (sender policy framework) widely used. It is by utilizing this there is no chance for a hacker to spoof the information of the company. This is the most essential step for securing emails from being used by hackers for spam emails.
When the SPF system is deployed, servers check the domain’s return path present on the header of the email. This information is also verified by the recipient server to verify the return path so that the TXT record can be verified in the DNS record of senders. When the SPF record generator is available, servers will allow the incoming email, the unavailability of IP will result in the SPF failure.
For the generation of SPF record, there are the following steps that must be followed;
- The first step is to collect the information about the IP address from which the email is being sent by the brands to others. Those who use to send emails from more than one source must list down all these sources.
- Listing down all the domains are also needed, it is possible sometimes that company use more than one domain. In such scenarios, it is advised to have all the domains to be listed, even those domains that are not in use for emails.
- In the third step, the role of SPF comes in, when the mail is being set, it verifies all the details about IP and domain published by the sender in the DNS record.
- So for getting things done in the right way, it is necessary to publish the SPF records to DNS. In the case of own domain, this step is quite simple however if the domain is being managed by ISP, then it should be requested to ISP for the publication of SPF record.
- Finally one can verify the SPF record by employing the option of SPF check tool.
