Forum Discussion
Third party email vendors and DKIM
Our group supports many agencies with in one tenant and with one sending domain. That said there are many outside vendors that send as "ourdomain.com". Is there a limit to the number of DKIM entries ...
Juan_CUMC Thats not really true. DKIM is governed by selectors. Each third party sender could use a unique selector for the same domain and that would work.
This is correct, we do it constantly. We created a subdomain off our main domain to keep things organized like email.yourdomain.com. This does not affect the header from value on the message which would stay as yourdomain.com. (alignment for dmarc compliance). Each vendor would be given their own selector value. s=vendor1 vendor2... etc by you. It has to be unique for each vendor but is an arbitrary value you can make up.
When THE VENDOR generates the dkim key, THE VENDOR would specify the values you give them: s=vendor1 d=email.yourdomain.com.
the dns record you create in your dns becomes vendor1._domainkey.email.yourdomain.com. You would then take the dkim key that they generate and then sent back to you and import it into your domain record in your dns. When the message are sent from the vendor, the dkim key contains the s=value d=value you told them to use when they generate the key. The recipient of the email looks up the value after the d= to get to the doman and the the txt record using the s= value. The key pairs are verified and the mail is accepted.
**Note you can simplify the management of the dkim key by letting the vendor host the key in their own dns instead of you hosting it in your dns. You would get from the Vendor the cname value of where they are storing the key in their dns, then you would add that as a cname to your dns record as a cname instead of the key. I would recommend the second scenario if possible.
Do or should SPF records need to be created for all these sub domians?
Thanks Andy. That answers my question. One other item that crossed out mind is if we go down this road then we will be relying on the Vendors to have messaging Hygiene. The other option we are considering is to create sub address in DNS vendor1.yourdomain.com, vendor2.yourdomain.com, etc. then have the mail routed back through O365 EOP for hygiene.
Michael
With the possibility of showing off my ignorance. Usually dkim is for external to external impersonation of your domain or authentication. How would you get the mail to route through o365 when it originates from an external sender and is going to an external sender. Assuming that you can, does o365 put a limit on the number of messages you can route through their system per day?
We have a few 3rd parties that send info internal, those would be the ones I was thinking of. You are right about the external sending however. Also agree with the 10,000 cap.
john nixon Agree. CNAME is the best option.
