Internet Engineering Task Force approves DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)

Internet Engineering Task Force approves DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has given its approval to the DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) and has turned it into a proposed standard, RFC 4871.

DKIM has been designed to provide additional information to ISPs and consumers to help check the origin of an email.

It provides an e-mail authentication framework that uses cryptographic signature technology to verify the domain of the sender.

Mark Delany, lead architect, Yahoo! Mail, and author, DomainKeys spoke on this new development: “We are gratified that the core DomainKeys technology, which Yahoo! first introduced in 2003, has evolved to reach this milestone through the IETF process, and that DomainKeys Identified Mail is positioned to become the pre-eminent standard for e-mail authentication. We currently see about a billion DomainKeys signed e-mails flow through Yahoo! Mail each day, and we look forward to continued momentum as more senders adopt the new e-mail authentication standard.”

Jim Fenton, engineer, technology center, Cisco, and author, DKIM added: “DKIM can improve user’s trust in e-mail and, in doing so, make the Internet a safer and more useful tool. Developing reputation-based and accreditation systems that incorporate this technology will create a safer online environment for users at work, at home and on the go.”

Some of the companies working on this technology includes Yahoo!, Cisco, Sendmail and PGP Corporation.