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Enhance email security by enabling authentication with SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and ARC. This reduces spoofed emails and spam by verifying sender authenticity. Monitor the Suspended tickets view to identify and address issues with sender authority or auto-forwarding workflows. If many emails are suspended, consult your domain admin or provider to correct workflows instead of disabling the feature.

To decrease the number of spoofed emails and spam you receive, you can add an additional layer of security to your inbound emails by turning on authentication with SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and ARC support.
  • Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is a path-based email authentication technique.
  • DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is a signature-based email authentication technique.
  • Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) is a technical specification that allows email message senders and receivers to cooperate and better detect when messages don't originate from the internet domain they appear to represent.
  • Authenticated Received Chain (ARC) is a set of email headers used to preserve and validate authentication through auto-forwarding. You may want to check that your email provider supports this protocol.
Important: Turning on this type of security authentication can lead to more cases where emails from unauthenticated workflows, spammers, or even regular senders may end up in your Suspended tickets view. This can reveal very important ways to improve the health of your email ecosystem. In addition, Zendesk occasionally makes improvements and updates to our authentication policies, which may result in minimal changes to ticket suspensions.

This article includes the following topics:

  • Turning on sender authentication
  • Checking for suspensions

Related articles:

  • Workflow: Ensuring email system compatibility with Zendesk
  • Understanding and managing suspended tickets and spam
  • Viewing, recovering, and deleting suspended tickets
  • Support tip: What does "Detected as spam" mean?

    Turning on sender authentication

    SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and ARC alignment, also referred to as sender authentication, is managed on the Email page in Admin Center.

    To turn on sender authentication

    1. In Admin Center, click Channels in the sidebar, then select Talk and email > Email.
    2. Scroll to the Authenticate emails received with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC alignment section and select Enable.

    3. Select an option: Minimal, Native Traffic, or Native & Forwarded Traffic.

      Zendesk recommends turning on this feature for Native Traffic first, then testing to ensure that Native & Forwarded Traffic isn't suspending traffic that should arrive with authentication verified.

      • Minimal: Basic protection across your Zendesk account that protects both native and forwarded email, suspending only emails that are blatant spoof attempts.
      • Native Traffic: DMARC authentication is supported for emails sent directly to native Zendesk support addresses by end users.
      • Native & Forwarded Traffic: Zendesk runs authentication checks on email traffic forwarded to Zendesk, leveraging ARC headers and authentication results from the forwarding address.
    4. Click Save at the bottom of the page.

    Emails that don't pass this type of authentication are suspended. You can view them in your Suspended tickets view. Tickets suspended for failing to pass authentication have Failed email authentication as the cause of suspension. Be very careful recovering these, as they may not be from the sender listed in the email.

    Checking for suspensions

    After you turn on this feature, it's important to monitor your Suspended tickets view regularly for suspensions. Emails that are suspended indicate an issue with the sender’s authority or possibly with your auto-forwarding workflow. We advise correcting the workflow rather than turning off the feature.

    To check your Suspended tickets view

    • In Zendesk Support, click the Views () icon in the sidebar and then click the Suspended tickets view.

      You can arrange the view by Cause of suspension to make identifying issues easier.

    If you find that many emails are suspended, turn off this feature temporarily and contact your domain admin or provider. This is an indication that your forwarding workflow may need to be examined and corrected. You may also need to contact Zendesk Customer Support.

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