Uptime Report Research · Original DNS measurement

MSP Email Security: Only 40% of Managed Service Providers Enforce DMARC on Their Own Domain

MSP email security starts with the MSP’s own domain, so we checked it. On November 11, 2026 we looked up the public DNS records of 1,430 US managed service providers that receive email, drawn from the SBA’s Dynamic Small Business Search. 66% publish a DMARC record, but only 40% enforce it with quarantine or reject, the same record rate as the long tail of the web (66.0%) and 20 points below the top 10,000 websites on enforcement (60.8%).

Key findings

  1. 40% of 1,430 MSP mail domains enforce DMARC with p=quarantine or p=reject (95% CI 38 to 43), against 60.8% of the top 10,000 websites and 30.5% of long-tail websites in our October scan.
  2. 34% publish no valid DMARC record at all, and another 26% sit at p=none, which reports spoofing but blocks nothing.
  3. 64% publish both an SPF record and a DMARC record, the DNS-visible part of the rules Google and Yahoo have applied to bulk senders since February 2024.
  4. By mail provider, enforcement runs from 51% for gateway-filtered domains to 27% for Google Workspace domains.
  5. Firms established before 2006 enforce DMARC at 52%; firms established in 2021 or later at 33%.
  6. MSPs whose SBA profile advertises cybersecurity services enforce at 42%, compared with 39% for those that do not, a difference within the margin of error (p = 0.16).
  7. The newer transport controls are rare: 3.1% publish MTA-STS, 3.6% TLS-RPT and 1.9% BIMI; 10.5% have DNSSEC.
40%enforce DMARC (quarantine or reject)
34%publish no valid DMARC record
26%stop at p=none, which blocks nothing
14%use p=reject, the strongest setting
1,430MSP mail domains checked, November 11, 2026

Free to cite and republish with a link. No individual MSP is named anywhere in this report or its dataset.

The policy funnel: from SPF to an enforced DMARC policy

Each step below is a stricter test. A domain needs an SPF record, then a DMARC record, then a DMARC policy that tells receiving servers to quarantine or reject mail that fails. The black ticks mark the top 10,000 websites and the grey dashed ticks the long-tail sample from our DMARC adoption scan of 15,000 domains, both counted on mail domains only.

Top 10,000 websites (Oct 19, 2026)Long-tail websites (Oct 19, 2026)
Receive mail (MX record)Receive mail (MX record): 100.0% of 1,430 MSP mail domains100%Publish an SPF recordPublish an SPF record: 94.1% of 1,430 MSP mail domains94%Top 10,000 websites: 93.2%Publish a DMARC recordPublish a DMARC record: 66.4% of 1,430 MSP mail domains66%Top 10,000 websites: 82.8%Long-tail websites: 66.0%Enforce DMARC (quarantine or reject)Enforce DMARC (quarantine or reject): 40.5% of 1,430 MSP mail domains40%Top 10,000 websites: 60.8%Long-tail websites: 30.5%Enforce and collect reports (rua)Enforce and collect reports (rua): 35.4% of 1,430 MSP mail domains35%Reject outright (p=reject)Reject outright (p=reject): 14.3% of 1,430 MSP mail domains14%Top 10,000 websites: 35.2%Long-tail websites: 14.8%0%100% of MSP mail domains (n = 1,430)

The drop happens at enforcement. 94% of MSP mail domains have SPF, about the same as the top 10,000 websites (93.2%). 66% have DMARC, the same as the long tail (66.0%) and well short of the top 10,000 (82.8%). But only 40% enforce, and 14% reject. 73 domains enforce without an rua address, so they block spoofed mail but receive no aggregate reports showing who is sending as them.

Would MSP domains pass Google and Yahoo’s sender rules?

Google and Yahoo started enforcing new sender requirements in February 2024. Both apply DMARC only to bulk senders, and both accept a monitor-only policy:

Google, Email sender guidelines: senders of 5,000 or more messages a day must “Set up SPF and DKIM email authentication for your domain” and “Set up DMARC email authentication for your sending domain. Your DMARC enforcement policy can be set to none.” All senders must “Set up SPF or DKIM email authentication for your sending domains.”
Yahoo Sender Hub, Sender Best Practices: bulk senders must “Implement both SPF & DKIM” and “Publish a valid DMARC policy with at least p=none.” Yahoo says enforcement began in February 2024.

64% of MSP mail domains publish both a valid SPF record and a valid DMARC record. DKIM cannot be checked from DNS without knowing each sender’s selector, so this is an upper bound on full compliance. The DMARC rule binds only senders above Google’s 5,000-a-day threshold, which DNS cannot show, so the gap is not proof of a violation. It does mean 36% of these firms have not met the floor that Gmail and Yahoo set for bulk senders in 2024 on their own domain.

Provider split: who hosts MSP mail, and who enforces

54% of the MSP mail domains point their MX record directly at Microsoft 365 and 18% at Google Workspace, a heavier Microsoft tilt than the 32% Microsoft and 27% Google we measured across the top 100,000 websites in our DNS census of Microsoft 365 market share. 13% route inbound mail through a filtering gateway first; the most common are Proofpoint (110), Barracuda (24), Mimecast (13), OpenText (Zix / AppRiver) (8).

No DMARC recordInvalid recordp=none (monitor only)p=quarantinep=reject
Microsoft 365n = 772Microsoft 365: No DMARC record 238 of 772 (30.8%)31%Microsoft 365: Invalid record 5 of 772 (0.6%)Microsoft 365: p=none (monitor only) 181 of 772 (23.4%)23%Microsoft 365: p=quarantine 225 of 772 (29.1%)29%Microsoft 365: p=reject 123 of 772 (15.9%)16%Google Workspacen = 256Google Workspace: No DMARC record 113 of 256 (44.1%)44%Google Workspace: Invalid record 3 of 256 (1.2%)Google Workspace: p=none (monitor only) 71 of 256 (27.7%)28%Google Workspace: p=quarantine 46 of 256 (18.0%)18%Google Workspace: p=reject 23 of 256 (9.0%)9%Security gateway in frontn = 183Security gateway in front: No DMARC record 31 of 183 (16.9%)17%Security gateway in front: Invalid record 2 of 183 (1.1%)Security gateway in front: p=none (monitor only) 56 of 183 (30.6%)31%Security gateway in front: p=quarantine 63 of 183 (34.4%)34%Security gateway in front: p=reject 31 of 183 (16.9%)17%Other host or own servern = 219Other host or own server: No DMARC record 89 of 219 (40.6%)41%Other host or own server: p=none (monitor only) 62 of 219 (28.3%)28%Other host or own server: p=quarantine 40 of 219 (18.3%)18%Other host or own server: p=reject 28 of 219 (12.8%)13%

Share of each provider group’s mail domains by published DMARC policy. “Security gateway in front” means the lowest-preference MX host belongs to a filtering service; the mailbox behind it can be Microsoft 365, Google or a server.

Group Mail domains SPF Any DMARC p=none Enforcing p=reject rua reports
Microsoft 365 772 98% 69% 23% 45% 16% 54%
Google Workspace 256 84% 55% 28% 27% 9% 41%
Security gateway in front 183 99% 82% 31% 51% 17% 64%
Other host or own server 219 88% 59% 28% 31% 13% 37%
All MSP mail domains 1,430 94% 66% 26% 40% 14% 50%

The gap between providers matters for remediation. Gateway-filtered domains enforce at 51%, Google Workspace domains at 27%. Google Workspace domains are also the least likely to end SPF with a hard fail (8%, against 77% for Microsoft 365), which mirrors the two vendors’ setup instructions: Google’s help page gives v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all, while Microsoft’s gives v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all and says it recommends -all.

Do MSPs follow what they sell?

Each firm in the SBA database writes its own capabilities statement. We flagged statements that advertise cybersecurity (terms such as cybersecurity, SOC, SIEM, EDR, zero trust or managed security) and statements that mention CMMC, NIST 800-171 or DFARS, the defense compliance frameworks tracked in our CMMC certification statistics.

Group Mail domains SPF Any DMARC p=none Enforcing p=reject rua reports
Profile mentions cybersecurity services 748 95% 67% 24% 42% 15% 51%
Profile does not mention cybersecurity 682 93% 66% 27% 39% 13% 49%
Profile mentions CMMC, NIST 800-171 or DFARS 127 94% 76% 24% 51% 22% 59%
Profile does not mention CMMC 1,303 94% 65% 26% 39% 14% 49%
Founded before 2006 328 97% 80% 28% 52% 16% 61%
2006 to 2015 444 96% 69% 27% 42% 17% 54%
2016 to 2020 324 93% 56% 22% 34% 12% 42%
2021 or later 331 91% 59% 26% 33% 12% 44%

Mostly, no. Firms that advertise cybersecurity enforce DMARC at 42%, against 39% for firms that do not, and that gap is not statistically significant (two-proportion test, p = 0.16). Firms that name CMMC, NIST 800-171 or DFARS do better at 51% against 39% (p = 0.01, n = 127), and they reject outright more often (22% against 14%). Even so, about half of the CMMC-advertising firms do not enforce on their own domain. Separately, 44 of the 1,430 firms (3.1%) list a free consumer mailbox such as Gmail or Yahoo as their SBA contact email rather than an address on their own domain.

Older firms enforce more often

SBA profiles carry the year a business was established but no headcount, so we use firm age as the size and maturity proxy.

0%20%40%60%80%Founded before 2006: 51.8% enforce DMARC (95% CI 46 to 57), n = 32852%Founded before 2006n = 3282006 to 2015: 42.3% enforce DMARC (95% CI 38 to 47), n = 44442%2006 to 2015n = 4442016 to 2020: 34.0% enforce DMARC (95% CI 29 to 39), n = 32434%2016 to 2020n = 3242021 or later: 32.9% enforce DMARC (95% CI 28 to 38), n = 33133%2021 or latern = 331

Bars show the share of mail domains enforcing DMARC; whiskers are 95% Wilson confidence intervals. 3 domains with no valid founding year are left out of this chart.

SPF details and the advanced tier

SPF is the oldest control and the most widely deployed, but configuration varies. RFC 7208 caps an SPF evaluation at 10 DNS-querying terms (include, a, mx, ptr, exists and redirect); we followed every include and counted.

SPF result MSP mail domains Share Top 10,000 websites
Hard fail (-all) 747 52.2% 43.3%
Soft fail (~all) 570 39.9% 44.0%
Neutral (?all) 11 0.8% 2.0%
Pass all (+all) 0 0.0% 0.0%
Redirect to another record 8 0.6% 2.9%
No all mechanism 10 0.7% 0.3%
Two or more SPF records (invalid) 14 1.0% n/a
No SPF record 70 4.9% 6.8%
More than 10 DNS lookups (permerror risk) 44 3.1% not measured
SPF hard fail (-all)SPF hard fail (-all): 52.2% of 1,43052.2%DMARC reporting (rua)DMARC reporting (rua): 50.3% of 1,43050.3%DNSSEC signed (DS record)DNSSEC signed (DS record): 10.5% of 1,43010.5%TLS-RPT recordTLS-RPT record: 3.6% of 1,4303.6%MTA-STS recordMTA-STS record: 3.1% of 1,4303.1%BIMI recordBIMI record: 1.9% of 1,4301.9%

MTA-STS (RFC 8461) and TLS-RPT (RFC 8460) protect mail in transit by telling senders to require TLS and to report failures. BIMI publishes a brand logo for inboxes that support it. Each of these is published by fewer than 5 in 100 MSP domains.

MSP email security by state

States with at least 10 MSP mail domains in the sample are listed separately; smaller states are pooled so that no row describes one or two identifiable firms. Click a column header to sort.

State Mail domains SPF Any DMARC p=none Enforcing p=reject rua reports
Virginia 181 94% 59% 22% 37% 11% 46%
Texas 151 92% 68% 27% 41% 19% 52%
Florida 138 93% 68% 25% 43% 15% 54%
Maryland 129 91% 54% 32% 22% 8% 38%
California 107 96% 66% 20% 47% 13% 54%
Georgia 85 91% 51% 28% 22% 6% 32%
Pennsylvania 46 98% 72% 22% 50% 15% 59%
New York 44 98% 75% 32% 43% 16% 55%
North Carolina 39 92% 56% 26% 31% 8% 36%
New Jersey 36 97% 69% 25% 44% 28% 61%
Illinois 33 94% 70% 33% 36% 9% 36%
Colorado 27 96% 67% 11% 56% 37% 48%
Michigan 26 96% 81% 27% 54% 15% 69%
Indiana 25 100% 84% 24% 60% 20% 68%
Ohio 25 84% 64% 32% 32% 4% 44%
Alabama 20 100% 55% 25% 30% 10% 45%
Massachusetts 19 100% 68% 21% 47% 11% 58%
South Carolina 19 100% 79% 47% 32% 16% 63%
District of Columbia 18 83% 39% 6% 33% 6% 28%
Missouri 18 94% 78% 44% 33% 6% 50%
Connecticut 17 100% 82% 29% 53% 18% 53%
Arizona 17 100% 76% 18% 59% 35% 71%
Tennessee 17 94% 59% 6% 53% 24% 47%
Washington 16 94% 50% 19% 31% 6% 31%
New Mexico 13 100% 77% 54% 23% 8% 46%
Wisconsin 13 100% 92% 23% 69% 15% 62%
Kansas 12 83% 75% 33% 42% 8% 42%
Louisiana 11 100% 82% 64% 18% 9% 55%
Oklahoma 10 90% 70% 30% 40% 10% 60%
Mississippi 10 100% 90% 0% 90% 30% 70%
Minnesota 10 100% 90% 30% 60% 20% 80%
Other 22 states and territories (fewer than 10 each) 98 95% 81% 24% 56% 22% 67%
United States, all 1,430 94% 66% 26% 40% 14% 50%

The sample is weighted toward states with many federal IT contractors, because SBA’s database is built for government buyers. Among the 15 states with at least 25 MSP mail domains, enforcement is highest in Indiana (60%, n = 25) and lowest in Georgia (22%, n = 85). Below 25 domains, a state’s rate can move 10 points or more on two or three firms, so treat those rows as indicative.

How to check your own MSP’s domain in five minutes

Every check in this study uses public DNS, so any MSP can repeat it for its own domain and for each client domain. Replace example.com with your domain.

  1. SPF. Run dig +short TXT example.com (or nslookup -type=txt example.com on Windows). You want exactly one line starting v=spf1, ending in -all or ~all. Two SPF lines make both invalid.
  2. SPF lookups. Count include, a, mx, ptr, exists and redirect terms, including those inside each included record. More than 10 is a permanent error at the receiver.
  3. DMARC. Run dig +short TXT _dmarc.example.com. Look for p=quarantine or p=reject, a rua=mailto: address for aggregate reports, and no pct below 100.
  4. Transport. Run dig +short TXT _mta-sts.example.com (expect v=STSv1) and dig +short TXT _smtp._tls.example.com (expect v=TLSRPTv1).
  5. DNSSEC and BIMI. dig +short DS example.com returns a line if the zone is signed at the registry. dig +short TXT default._bimi.example.com shows a BIMI record.

A domain at p=none with an rua address is ready to move to quarantine once the reports show every legitimate sender passing. A parked or non-sending domain can go straight to v=spf1 -all and p=reject.

What this means for MSPs

Prospects and auditors can run the same five lookups. An MSP that sells email security from a domain at p=none, or with no DMARC record, is showing the gap in public. The fix for most of the 26% at p=none is a staged move: confirm in rua reports that Microsoft 365 or Google, the PSA, the marketing platform and the invoicing tool all pass, then set p=quarantine, then p=reject. The 44 domains over the SPF lookup limit should flatten or remove unused includes before tightening DMARC, because a broken SPF record turns into DMARC failures once DKIM fails too. Our phishing statistics follow the FBI’s business email compromise complaints year by year; a spoofable MSP domain hands those attackers a sender that client staff already trust.

Frequently asked questions

Do MSPs use DMARC on their own domains?

Most publish a record, few enforce it. In our November 11, 2026 DNS check of 1,430 managed service provider mail domains, 66% had a DMARC record, but only 40% set it to quarantine or reject and 14% to reject.

What percentage of MSPs have SPF?

94% of MSP mail domains publish an SPF record. 52% end it with a hard fail (-all), and 44 domains (3.1%) need more than the 10 DNS lookups SPF allows, which makes receivers return a permanent error.

Do Google and Yahoo require DMARC?

For bulk senders, yes. Since February 2024, Google requires senders of 5,000 or more messages a day to Gmail to set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC, and says the DMARC policy can be none. Yahoo requires bulk senders to publish a valid DMARC policy with at least p=none. 64% of MSP mail domains publish both SPF and DMARC.

Which email provider do MSPs use?

Of the 1,430 MSP mail domains, 54% point their MX record straight at Microsoft 365, 18% at Google Workspace and 13% at a filtering gateway such as Proofpoint. Another 137 gateway domains list Microsoft 365 in SPF, which suggests a Microsoft mailbox behind the filter.

How can an MSP check its own DMARC record?

Run nslookup -type=txt _dmarc.yourdomain.com or dig +short TXT _dmarc.yourdomain.com. A record that starts v=DMARC1 and contains p=quarantine or p=reject is enforcing; p=none only monitors. Check SPF with dig +short TXT yourdomain.com and look for a single line that starts v=spf1.

Download the data. msp-email-security-dns-aggregates-2026.csv (CSV). Licensed under CC BY 4.0: free to reuse with attribution to The Uptime Report.

The CSV holds aggregate counts and shares by provider, state (pooled below 10 domains), firm age and profile segment. It contains no domain names or firm identifiers.

Methodology

Sample frame. SBA Dynamic Small Business Search (search.certifications.sba.gov), queried on November 12, 2026 with 10 search terms (such as “managed service provider”, “managed IT services”, “MSP” and “MSSP”), giving 21,749 distinct business profiles. We kept profiles whose capabilities statement or keywords describe managed services (regular expression for “managed services”, “managed IT”, “managed security”, MSP or MSSP), that list at least one IT NAICS code (5415, 5182, 517, 4234, 8112, 5191, 5112 or 5132 prefixes), and that give a website. Websites were reduced to the registrable domain and de-duplicated, leaving 1,512 domains. Of these, 79 had no usable MX record (no MX, null MX or nonexistent domain) and 3 still returned resolver errors after a retry, leaving 1,430 mail domains. SBA’s database covers small businesses that register for federal contracting, so it over-represents government IT contractors and is not a census of all MSPs. We first considered a commercial MSP directory and did not use it because its terms of service forbid harvesting its data.

Measurement. Between 2026-11-11 09:28 and 2026-11-11 09:44 UTC we queried Google Public DNS over HTTPS (Cloudflare as fallback), at most 5 lookups at a time and about 15 a second, for MX, apex TXT (SPF and the Microsoft 365 verification token), TXT at _dmarc, _mta-sts, _smtp._tls and default._bimi, DS (DNSSEC) and SOA. SPF includes and redirects were resolved recursively to count DNS-querying terms. No web pages, mail servers or ports of any MSP were contacted.

Definitions. Enforcing means a single valid v=DMARC1 record with p=quarantine or p=reject; 24 enforcing records apply the policy to less than 100% of mail (pct below 100) and are still counted as enforcing. Mail provider is taken from the lowest-preference MX hosts using the same rules as our Microsoft 365 census. DKIM was not measured because selectors cannot be listed from DNS.

Benchmarks. Top 10,000 and long-tail figures come from our October 19, 2026 scan of the Tranco list, mail domains only (n = 7,266 and 3,277).

Privacy. Results are published only as aggregates. States with fewer than 10 domains are pooled. No MSP is named, and the raw per-domain results are not published.

Not advice. A DNS record shows a published policy, not whether a firm’s mail actually passes authentication or how it protects clients.

Cite as:The Uptime Report. "MSP Email Security: Only 40% of Managed Service Providers Enforce DMARC on Their Own Domain." November 2026. https://theuptimereport.com/msp-email-security-dmarc-study/

References

  1. U.S. Small Business Administration, Dynamic Small Business Search. Accessed November 2026.
  2. SBA, About the SBA.gov website (public domain notice). Accessed November 2026.
  3. Google, Email sender guidelines. Accessed November 2026.
  4. Yahoo Sender Hub, Sender Best Practices. Accessed November 2026.
  5. Google Workspace Admin Help, Set up SPF. Accessed November 2026.
  6. Microsoft Learn, Set up SPF to identify valid email sources for your Microsoft 365 domain. Accessed November 2026.
  7. RFC 7489, Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC). Accessed November 2026.
  8. RFC 7208, Sender Policy Framework (SPF), section 4.6.4 DNS lookup limits. Accessed November 2026.
  9. RFC 8461, SMTP MTA Strict Transport Security (MTA-STS). Accessed November 2026.
  10. RFC 8460, SMTP TLS Reporting. Accessed November 2026.
  11. Google Public DNS, JSON API for DNS over HTTPS. Accessed November 2026.

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