Getting BIMI-Ready: How DigiCert-Valimail Partnership Enforces VMC/ DMARC Compliance

Companies are preparing to comply with VMC/DMARC using Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI). Valimail and DigiCert have come together to support companies in their effort to get BIMI-ready in quick time. BIMI is the new gold standard in pilot that help companies to display their brand insignia, such a logo or an emblem in emails with a VMC stamp.

VMC is Verified Mark Certificate. DigiCert is the world’s leading provider of TLS/SSL, IoT and other PKI solutions, and Valimail is the leading provider of identity-based anti-phishing solutions.

How Do VMC-DMARC Help Branding in Safe Environment?

VMCs provide the following benefits for early adopter organizations:

• Long term, ensure customers see your logo in their inbox — even before they open the email.
• Provide an additional layer of protection against identity-targeted attacks through DMARC compliance.
• Deliver a more authentic, recognizable and unified brand experience from email to conversion.
• Distinguish your messaging from the clutter.
• Improve deliverability and open rates by up to 10%.

DMARC enforcement is a key tool in companies’ battles against growing amounts of email phishing campaigns. DMARC gives companies visibility into who is sending emails from their domains, and gives them the ability to control which of those services or servers are allowed to do so. With an enforcement policy, unauthorized senders using the domain are automatically blocked by most receiving mail servers in the world today.

VMCs enable companies using DMARC to place a verified, trademarked logo next to the “sender” field in customers’ inboxes. Developed by the AuthIndicators Working Group, the BIMI pilot program is intended to create a more trustworthy inbox experience for all email users worldwide through increasing the use of authentication to reduce email fraud.

At the time of this announcement, DigiCert Senior Director of Business Development Dean Coclin said, “DigiCert is pleased to partner with Valimail to support pilots that advance the BIMI email security standard with VMCs. We anticipate growing demand for digital certificates displaying verified logos in email and are developing scalable solutions to help companies be ready on day one.”

“BIMI is a huge step forward for email marketing, and when combined with DMARC enforcement it will help make the entire ecosystem more secure,” said Steve Mock, VP of Business Development for Valimail. “We’re very proud to be working with DigiCert to create a one-stop shop for companies to make themselves BIMI-ready.”

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Recent DMARC and VMC Applications

A major BIMI pilot with Yahoo has been underway for the past year, and Google has recently announced plans to launch a BIMI pilot in 2020. Upcoming BIMI pilots are expected to require VMCs for participants. DigiCert issued the world’s first VMC for a domain that sends email at scale to CNN.com in Oct. 2019.

DigiCert and Valimail are working together to establish a streamlined experience for companies to enforce Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC), an email authentication, policy and reporting protocol, and receive VMCs, both essential steps for BIMI compliance. DigiCert’s globally leading platform, together with regional staffing and expertise, enable fast, scalable and automated certificate management. The Valimail platform makes DMARC compliance faster and easier, and also offers an automated way for customers to manage BIMI configuration.

DigiCert is the world’s leading issuer of digital certificates, with a global presence and highly scalable infrastructure that makes it the top choice for emerging global and localized security standards using cryptography to authenticate identities and encrypt information online. DigiCert is supporting BIMI pilots in anticipation of a broad offering in its industry-leading DigiCert CertCentral® TLS Manager, available in 11 languages and nine currencies, later this year. DigiCert was recently named 2020 Global Company of the Year in the TLS certificate market by Frost & Sullivan, in recognition of its strong market leadership in its growth, supporting the adoption of new standards and continually innovating with the industry’s best, most modern public key infrastructure (PKI) technology.

Valimail is a leader in the DMARC space. This pioneering zero-trust identity-based anti-phishing company offers the only complete, cloud-native platform for validating and authenticating sender identity. It provides the most complete, effective visibility tool for interpreting DMARC reports, with the highest success rate among customers for achieving DMARC enforcement. It is also the largest provider of DMARC services to Microsoft 365 customers, and the world’s fastest-growing DMARC vendor.