Blog | Vade

Vade Cloud Now Supports DKIM Signing for Outbound Messages

Written by Todd Stansfield | November 15, 2022

Vade is pleased to announce that Vade Cloud now supports DKIM (DomainKey Identified Mail) signing for all outbound messages. The news follows successful testing and confirmation that Vade Cloud retains the integrity of DKIM signatures during the filtering process, giving administrators and organizations more flexibility and control over email authentication.

This development provides multiple benefits to existing and prospective Vade customers. It means that organizations can now manage DKIM signatures directly on their on-premises server, allowing administrators to leverage native tools and functionality.

Background on DKIM and email security

DKIM is an email authentication protocol that validates the authenticity of outbound emails to prevent the spoofing or altering of messages. Before an outbound message is sent, the outbound mail server adds a private DKIM signature—which identifies the sender—to the headers and body of an email message.

Before the message reaches the recipient, it undergoes a process of authentication. The inbound mail server intercepts the message and fetches the sender’s public DKIM signature from the sender’s DNS (domain name system) records. It then compares the private and public signature to see if they match. If they do, the inbound mail server authenticates the email and delivers it to the recipient. Otherwise, it drops the message and causes the delivery to fail.

Traditionally, email security technology can disrupt DKIM email authentication by breaking the signature added by the outbound server. This happens when the email security solution applies standard safety measures that modify the email header and body of an outgoing message. These measures include applying tags, adding disclaimers, rewriting URLs, or other actions.

To avoid these issues, organizations have resorted to delaying DKIM signing until after messages are analyzed by email security technology. While this preserves the DKIM signatures, it prevents administrators from managing signatures on their on-premises server, resulting in the loss of native features and functionality.

With this latest news, however, organizations and administrators using Vade Cloud will gain the flexibility and control to sign outbound messages before analysis by the email security solution.

Vade Cloud: going beyond DKIM

DKIM is a necessary security protocol, but not a comprehensive cybersecurity solution. Vade Cloud complements DKIM by providing your organization with the complete capabilities and features needed to detect and block all email-borne threats, including those that are dynamic or unknown to reputation- and signature-based scanners.

Combining a core set of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, Vade Cloud analyzes emails, URLs, attachments, and webpages to detect the behaviors or anomalies present in all cyberthreats, whether phishing campaigns, spear-phishing emails, or malware. The solution stays ahead of new and emerging threats by continuously leveraging the threat intelligence from more than 1.4 billion mailboxes worldwide.