On 12/1/20 8:50 PM, John Levine wrote:
> On the other hand, I observe that Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, U Penn,
> and Yale, whose situations are not altogether unlike Columbia's, all
> publish DMARC records. Closer to home so do NYU and CUNY. They all say
> p=none with rua= to collect reports. You might give them a buzz to see
> how it works for them.

The fact that Joseph is here raising valid deployment concerns shouldn't be 
overshadowed by an assumption that these other universities are ahead of the 
game.

I participated in a hi-ed cybersecurity committee to create an "email security 
maturity" rubric - basically just something that CISOs can use to 
reflect/compare to each other.  I advocated that publishing p=none and 
consuming the reports is a good first step, but just maturity level 1 (of 5).  

Some university cybersecurity organizations feel like publishing p=none (and, 
perhaps, not actually looking at the reports) puts them into "compliance" with 
this DMARC thing that only their email admins really grok. 

I would hesitate to assume that seeing p=none on a domain as an indicator that 
they are serious about deploying DMARC and reconciling their own Holy Roman 
Empire conundrums; rather it's there just to not be seen as lagging behind 
their peers, justifying funding for more SOC staff and perhaps buying some 
tools (*some* of which, hopefully, may be deployed to actually solve the issues 
identified in the DMARC reports).

For better or worse, DHS BOD 18-01 mandated that all federal agencies publish 
p=reject on their domains.  Now, *that* must have forced each agency to figure 
out how to actually deploy DMARC and deal with the implications.  I applaud the 
tenacity.


On 12/2/20 10:21 AM, Todd Herr wrote:
> This is, I think, one of the most underappreciated features of DMARC. With 
> p=none, a proper rua= value, and enough time, one can collect all the 
> information needed to address any authentication shortcomings within a 
> designated portion of the DNS namespace before moving forward to p=reject, 
> assuming that that is one's goal with a DMARC implementation. Even for less 
> lofty goals such as ensuring that all mail is properly DKIM signed, or that 
> the SPF record properly enumerates all mail sources, I can't think of a 
> better tool than DMARC aggregate reports for ferreting out that third party 
> that the Marketing department hired to send mail on the company's behalf, or 
> locating that one mail stream emanating from the "server" sitting at the side 
> of Eddie the Engineer's desk.

I agree with all of this.  As I mentioned above, I just question the assumption 
that seeing p=none in a DMARC record is a good indicator that the organization 
is actually doing all of the things you enumerate.

It's also pretty clear from my own experience that it's impossible for complex 
organizations to address all of their non-compliant sources of mail flow.  
Eventually, you just need to draw a line in the sand and cause the mail from 
random campus servers and ESPs who use domains without authorization to be 
rejected (or quarantined, in our case).  


On 12/2/20 1:48 PM, superu...@gmail.com wrote:
> If DMARC is thus constrained and you have a "p=reject" on "columbia.edu" 
> only, then nothing stops me from generating unauthenticated email with a From 
> field indicating "foobar.columbia.edu" for any subdomain "foobar", whether or 
> not it actually exists in the DNS.

I also advocated that sp=reject would be a sign of a high level of maturity.  I 
was in the minority and criticized for complicating the situation (only the 
flagship domain needs protection - said some).  Win some battles, lose some 
battles.

Regardless, I still feel like the tree walk is better than the org domain model 
since it would actually allow us to get to sp=reject.  With the org domain 
model, we'll probably be stuck at sp=none indefinitely.

Jesse

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