Signs that the internet is moving to a domain-based standard continue to proliferate. The latest: Goodmail Systems last month published a list that Goodmail has dubbed the industry's first domain-based whitelist of good email senders.
Called CertifiedDomain, it is the first in a new line of domain-based products to be introduced by Goodmail throughout 2010. "As more and more email senders embrace email authentication standards such as DKIM and SIDF, it is now time to assign and track reputation at the internet domain level," says Daniel Dreymann, president and co-founder of Goodmail.
Owners of internet domains listed on Goodmail's CertifiedDomain list undergo an accreditation process, passing checks across a number of public and private databases. Goodmail cross-references a domain's reputation against this data, making sure the applicant adheres to email sending best practices.
Beyond IP Addresses
While the move to domain-based standards is just getting underway, some in the industry are looking beyond this standard to additional measures. Up to this point, only the reputation of a sender's IP address has been a focus, according to Amir Lev, CTO, president, and co-founder of Commtouch (via ComputerWorld).
Limiting the approach to the sender's reputation, though, is a mistake, he says. "Increasingly, sender reputation's not just about IP addresses. An IP address, on its own, is an inexact and potentially error-prone way of identifying the message's sender."
For instance, it is equally important to make sure the sender information is legitimate, and hasn't been forged.
"If a message's sender uses DomainKeys Identified Mail, a recipient can verify that the sending domain is who it claims to be. Another method is the SPF/SenderID family of specifications," he says. "If we can verify the domain by one or both of these methods, we're able to confidently look up the reputation of this sender's domain - effectively, getting the reputation of the actual email address, not just the IP address."
Proposed Vouch By Reference
Another possible tool might emerge from a proposed standard called "Vouch By Reference", Lev says. "This standard intends to allow reputation services to vouch for 'legitimate' outgoing mail sent by others. VBR would add an additional header to the outgoing mail, which could be verified on receipt, to check that the service did actually vouch for the sender."
