Making Email More Secure: Understanding DKIM and SPF

Making Email More Secure: Understanding DKIM and SPF

Imagine you’re sending an important letter to a friend. You write your message, put it in an envelope, and drop it in the mailbox with your address (From Address) and your friend's address (To Address). But what if someone along the way tampers with your letter, changes the contents, or even forges a letter pretending to be you? Your friend might receive a completely different message, or worse, never get it at all.



This is exactly the kind of problem businesses face with email security. Just like traditional letters, emails can be intercepted, modified, or forged. To protect email communication, organizations use two important security measures: DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) and SPF (Sender Policy Framework).
Zylker Techfix encountered a major issue without these security measures : customers weren’t receiving support emails. Some emails bounced back, while others landed in spam folders. Without DKIM and SPF, email providers couldn’t verify whether Zylker’s emails were genuine or forged.

Understanding DKIM

Like official letters have signatures or company seals to prove authenticity, DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) does the same for emails.

DKIM : The Signature Seal for Emails

  • DKIM attaches a cryptographic signature to every email you send.
  • When the recipient’s email service (like Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo) gets the email, it checks this signature against your company’s domain records.
  • If the signature matches, the email is verified as authentic and delivered safely.
  • If the signature is missing or doesn’t match, the email might get rejected or marked as spam.

Adapting Custom SMTP for Public Domains

Using email forwarding and two-factor authentication, Zylker Techfix used public domains like Microsoft and Google with Zoho SMTP. Configuring DKIM was not the solution in this case; instead, the Custom SMTP setup within Zoho Desk resolved the issue. To further enhance security, they could enable Custom SMTP OAuth for a passwordless configuration.

Why did Zylker Techfix Implement DKIM?

Zylker Techfix used organization-level email addresses from a domain procured through their official website. These addresses were used by different departments. However, they faced email bounces due to authentication failures when sending messages via Zoho’s servers. This disrupted their customer support services, as bounced emails prevented ticket creation.
To resolve this, they enabled DKIM authentication in Zoho Desk. The setup was simple:
  1. Added the DKIM public key as a TXT record in their DNS settings.
  2. Verified the key using the "Verify" option in Zoho Desk.
  3. Ensured all outgoing emails carried the DKIM signature to authenticate email communications.
By enabling DKIM, Zylker Techfix significantly improved email deliverability, reduced email tampering, and prevented spoofing.

Understanding SPF

Now imagine you’re sending the package to your friend through a trusted courier service like FedEx or UPS. If someone tries to deliver a fake package using their branding, the courier service will refuse to accept it.
SPF (Sender Policy Framework) works in the same way—it ensures that only authorized mail servers can send emails on behalf of your domain.

SPF: The "Authorized Courier"

  • SPF acts as a list of trusted email servers that are allowed to send emails from your domain.
  • When an email is received, the recipient's email provider checks whether it came from an authorized server.
  • If the email comes from a trusted source, it is delivered; else it is rejected or marked as spam.

How did Zylker Techfix implement SPF?

Set up SPF by specifying specified email services as their authorized email senders.
To improve security, Zylker Techfix set up SPF records to tell email providers:
"Only emails sent from Authorized email servers should be considered legitimate. If an email comes from another server, don’t trust it!"

The Benefits
Setting up SPF prevented spam, fraudulent emails, and email spoofing while ensuring better email deliverability. 
After implementing DKIM and SPF, email deliverability improved, customers received emails without issues, and communication became more secure and professional.

Final Thoughts for Every Business
Whether you’re a small startup or a large enterprise, email security matters. Without DKIM and SPF, your business risks lost emails, email spoofing or tampered messages. 
Enable DKIM and SPF today!






      • Sticky Posts

      • Register for Zoho Desk Beta Community

        With the start of the year, we have decided to take a small step in making the life of our customers a little easier. We now have easy access to all our upcoming features and a faster way to request for beta access. We open betas for some of our features

      • Share your Zoho Desk story with us!

        Tell us how you use Zoho Desk for your business and inspire others with your story. Be it a simple workflow rule that helps you navigate complex processes or a macro that saves your team a lot of time; share it here and help the community learn and grow with shared knowledge. 

      • Tip #1: Learn to pick the right channels

        Mail, live chat, telephony, social media, web forms—there are so many support channels out there. Trying to pick the right channels to offer your customers can get pretty confusing. Emails are most useful when the customer wants to put things on record. However, escalated or complicated issues should not be resolved over email because it's slow and impersonal.  When you need immediate responses, live chat is more suitable. It's also quick and convenient, so it's the go-to channel for small issues. 

      • Welcome to Zoho Desk Community - Say hello here!

        Hello everyone! Though we have been here for a while, it’s time to formally establish the Zoho Desk Community; we’re really happy to have you all here! This can be the place where you take a moment to introduce yourself to the rest of the community. We’d love to hear all about you, what you do, what company or industry you work for, how you use Zoho Desk and anything else that you will like to share! Here’s a little about me. I am Chinmayee. I have been associated with Zoho since 2014. I joined here

      • Webinar 1: Blueprint for Customer Service

        With the launch of a host of new features in Zoho Desk, we thought it’ll be great to have a few webinars to help our customers make the most of them. We’re starting off with our most talked about feature, Blueprint in Zoho Desk. You can register for the Blueprint webinar here: The webinar will be delivered by our in-house product experts. This is a good opportunity to ask questions to our experts and understand how Blueprint can help you automate your service processes. We look forward to seeing

        • Recent Topics

        • Announcing new features in Trident for Mac (1.29.0)

          Hello everyone! Trident for macOS (v1.29.0) is here with new features and enhancements to enhance your business communication. Let's take a quick look at them. Access shared mailboxes. You can now view and access shared mailboxes in Trident, which are

        • Books is extremely slow again today !

          Everything is running slowly even with 500mb connection speed

        • Cyclic dependencies in many-to-many relationships...

          I have an application which includes a form for companies, and a form for contacts. Each company can be assigned 1 technical and 1 administrative contact. I have this working okay so far, but I want to copy the scripts used so far to a new empty application. When I import the scripts it fails with a message that says: Problem encountered while creating the application Error in resolving form dependency:Cyclic dependency among the forms:[Company, Contact] What can I do to resolve this? After all,

        • Zoho API to create ticket

          I'm developing an integration to create tickets via API, but, locally it works (send and recieve requests). In production it also works sending requests, but, my file don't recieve any response data. My URL is available in Zoho API Console and I have

        • Automate Timesheet Approvals with Multi-level Approval Rules

          Introducing Approval Rules for Timesheets in Zoho Projects. With this automation, teams can manage how timesheets are reviewed and approved by setting up rules with criteria and assigning approvers to handle submissions. Timesheet, when associated to

        • Labels Part 2

           Hey Zoho Mail Team, On the labels window on the left-hand pane, alphabetize label name display, rather than displaying in order created.  This one should be easy. Thanks, Drew

        • Building Toppings #1 - Serving your needs with Bigin Toppings

          Hey Biginners! We're excited to kick off our Developer Community series on building toppings for Bigin, and our goal is to provide an accessible, beginner-friendly, and relevant path for every developer. Imagine creating tiny pieces of software that unlock

        • Can we create Sprint with tasks from Multiple projects?

          Hi Team, We were using Zoho Sprints for quite sometime. Currently we have started the process of Sprint method. We couldnt create the active sprint board with the tasks from multiple projects. I would like to know whether this is possible or Any timeline

        • Tip of the Week #74– Create automated workflows in MS Power Automate

          Zoho TeamInbox now connects directly with Microsoft Power Automate, letting you streamline everyday routines tasks such as from sending emails to managing threads, with automated workflows. About the integration Zoho TeamInbox integrates with Microsoft

        • Account validation

          Hello everyone, I registered my account on ZeptoMail to use the system, but the problem is that the verification period on Zepto's end has already passed and I have limited functionality.

        • Paste issues in ZOHO crm notes

          Hi, since a week or so I have issues with the paste function in ZOHO CRM. I use "notes" to copy paste texts from Outlook emails and since a week or so, the pasting doesnt function as it should: some text just disappears and it gives a lot of empty lines/enters.....

        • Is it possible to add a gradient color to a newsletter im designing?

          From where i sit it looks like you can only choose a single color but not combine 2 colors?

        • New Feature: Audit Log in Zoho Bookings

          Greetings from the Zoho Bookings team! We’re excited to introduce Audit Log, a new feature designed to help you track all key actions related to your appointments. With Audit Log, you can maintain transparency, strengthen security, and ensure accountability.

        • Account disabled

          I have an issue I need help with. Whilst trialing ZOHO CRM I created the following: Account1 (-------------) using m__ame@m__rg___s__i__.___.__ and 2 personal emails Account2 (-------------) using a personal email and 2 users _al__1@______________._o_.__

        • Blocked Email

          We are a Zoho One subscriber and use Yahoo as our MX provider. A few times each year, for the past four years, CRM blocks one or more of my Zoho One users from receiving internal email from CRM. This includes "@mentions" in all modules, and emails from

        • message var is empty in bot mention handler

          Hi, I'm encountering a problem: in my bot's mention handler, I want to retrieve the text the user typed when mentioning the bot. Example: On the #tests-cyril channel, I send this message: “@Donna hello how are you ?” I expect the system variable "message"

        • Remembrance Day to Remember – Recalling Values

          The phrase “at the eleventh hour” refers to the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, when the hostilities of World War I came to an end—but it still holds meaning today. Remembrance Day (Veterans Day in the US) is observed on November

        • Enhancing Zia's service with better contextual responses and article generation

          Hello everyone, We are enhancing Zia's Generative AI service to make your support experience smarter. Here's how: Increased accuracy with Qwen One of the key challenges in AI is delivering responses that are both contextually accurate and empathetic while

        • How to display two measures (sales and price) divided by categories on one line chart

          Hi everyone, I’m having trouble figuring out how to display two columns on a line chart with category breakdowns. What I need is a line chart where one line represents Sales and the other represents Price. However, the Price data is divided into around

        • Create custom rollup summary fields in Zoho CRM

          Hello everyone, In Zoho CRM, rollup summary fields have been essential tools for summarizing data across related records and enabling users to gain quick insights without having to jump across modules. Previously, only predefined summary functions were

        • Introducing the locking option for CRM records

          Last modified on 06/04/2023: Record locking option in CRM is now available for all Zoho CRM users in all DCs. Note that it was an early access feature available only upon request. Hello All, Hope you're doing well! We're thrilled to introduce our latest

        • Two new enhancements in Zoho CRM: Introducing new criteria for user fields and displaying group information in users page

          Announcement moderated on 14th June, 2023. Dear All, These enhancements are opened for all users in all DCs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear All, Hope you're well! We are here with two useful

        • Tip #49- Navigating the Remote Support Dashboard in Zoho Assist- 'Insider Insights'

          The Remote Support dashboard in Zoho Assist is designed to help technicians quickly access, manage, and monitor all their support sessions from a single, intuitive interface. Whether you’re starting a new session, managing ongoing connections, or reviewing

        • BMI formula

          I've been trying for hours to calculate BMI using height and weight as my only inputs. It's a simple calculation and I even went to ChatGPT to help me figure this out in Zoho Forms, but it led me down a path of "try this" and "try this". None of my attempts

        • SEO on blogs

          Hello, google is not able to find my blogs. Can you advice me if I need to change some settings or anything else to make it retrievable via SEO many thanks, hans

        • Duplicated Notebooks

          Out of the blue, almost all of my notebooks got duplicated and the different copies contain different information. Some seem like older copies than the others. I use the linux desktop app and sometimes the Android app. I assume that the sync failed at some point and was unable to merge the two versions together. But I'm afraid to add anything else to my notebook because if it can't properly sync 5 notebooks with only a handful of notes each, what will happen when I have hundreds of notes and I lose

        • Mind mapping in Zoho Projects

          Good morning,   I would like to congratulate the Zoho team for building such an inovative and responsive application that fits in the daily challenges of so many work groups. I would like suggest you another functionality that helps a lot in project planning and development: mind mapping. Mind mapping would be of great help for brianstorming, knowledge management and other needs in online collaboration.   Thanks and wish you all the best! George Maha Empresa Júnior Multidisciplinar do Instituto de

        • Retainer invoice in Zoho Finance modlue

          Hello, Is there a way of creating retainer invoices in the Zoho Finance module? If not can I request this is considered for future updates please.

        • Documents don't sync properly

          Hello, My team recently moved to Zoho workDrive, some of my team, work remotely so we believed Zoho would be the best way to share and edit files as well as access files withing the team. However we are experiencing sync issues, when a file is uploaded in the file explorer and shows sync complete, same file can be seen on the Zoho web app but other team members can't see the said file because it is not syncing properly. i figured out that if i were to go to preferences in settings and resync the

        • We are looking for an experienced Zoho Developer

          Hi Everyone! We’re on the lookout for a skilled Zoho Developer with hands-on experience in the Zoho Developer Platform (The Vertical CRM Platform) and if you don't know what that is, then you are not the person we are looking for. You would also need

        • Initiate approval workflow after "on edit --> on success"

          Dear Community,  currently I am working on a initiative tracker which should handle approval workflows based on different initiative status. As far as I understand, an approval workflow can be triggered (only?) when data is entered for the input form to the database.  Example: A new initiative is created and submitted. --> Approval Workflow triggered Here comes my question: Is it also possible to trigger an approval workflow if the form was "simply" updated? (on edit --> on success) Imagine the initiative

        • Tax Deductible Donations to a Charity Organisation

          For Australia, what's the best/proper method for entering an expense that is a tax deductible donation to a charitable organisation. And thus is appears correctly in Accounts and BAS as a GST payable deduction?

        • Simultaneous use of WhatsApp Account in SalesIQ and ZohoDesk

          Hi, We have only one number registered in Meta, it's possible use same account for two apps? All times here we try is stopping in SalesIQ. Regards,

        • External lookup fields to synchronise with Analytics

          Hello. I suggest adding external lookup custom fields to the Zoho Analytics integration settings. Currently, these types of fields are not available for synchronisation, so they cannot be used to generate reports with related tables in Analytics. Thank

        • We should have an option to Toggle Off KB Article Links in AI Answer Bot Replies

          Hi everyone, I'm creating this topic to share a feature idea that I think would improve the customer experience when using the AI Answer Bot for self-service. The Current Behavior (The Problem) Currently, when the AI Answer Bot generates a summary or

        • Boot Loop After Removing Service from Client via Admin

          We have multiple laptops experiencing a boot loop / unable to login after the Zoho Remote service was removed from their machine remotely via the desktop client. The Windows sign-in screen is not available, and users are unable to login. This seems like

        • Request Backend Correction — Domains Mapped to Same Help Center (Multi-Brand Setup Failure)

          Hello Zoho Desk Support Team, I need assistance correcting a domain-to-brand mapping issue in our Zoho Desk instance (The Blue Ribbon Project). Both of our verified domains currently point to the same Help Center instead of separate brand portals. Current

        • is there any option to enable the participants interact - can write on the screen, while the screen is shared by the host?

          this is most expected features - for teaching children. is there any option to enable the participants interact - can write on the screen, while the screen is shared by the host?

        • How to disable the Login button in Desk Helpcenter

          Hey there, I'm testing out whether the help center within Zoho Desk could replace our existing Customer FAQ. I tried to customize the themes for the public help center frontend, but stumbled across the login button in the navigation bar. Is there any

        • Subforms in stateless forms

          I think the title says it all. We need to be able to add subforms to stateless forms. Currently the only workaround is to create a Form and delete each record upon submission of the form. I need to build an interface to update our inventory. Basically

        • Next Page