We’re heading quickly into the last few weeks of 2025, which means the Q1 “audit season” is right around the corner. As the world of cybersecurity continues to evolve, auditors are increasingly asking pointed, difficult questions about your active defenses against modern threats.
We recently saw a cybersecurity questionnaire from a financial services auditor that stopped our client in their tracks. Tucked away in the “Email and Web Browser Protection” section was this question: “Indicate or describe any control or tools used by your institution to reduce the risk of email spoofing.”
How would you answer?
For thousands of organizations, the answer is “Well, we have a p=none DMARC policy.”
This blog post explains why that’s the wrong answer and how a fully-enforced, managed DMARC policy is the answer auditors are looking for.
The new audit landscape
With the rise of Business Email Compromise (BEC) costing businesses billions, auditors for SOC 2, ISO 27001, and financial regulators want to see active prevention. They know that the top vector for an attack is your email. It’s simply not good enough that you’re monitoring for threats, you need to have controls in place to stop them. This brings us back to that one critical question.
Why “p=none” fails the audit test
When an auditor asks for the “control or tool” you use to reduce the risk of email spoofing, a p=none DMARC policy is not the answer they want.
A p=none policy is a “monitoring-only” policy. It could tell you what’s happening (that’s if anyone on your team has the time or resources to look through the data dump of raw XML reports), but it definitely can not stop a scammer from impersonating your domain. This tells the auditor that you have a known compliance gap.
The right answer: A DMARC enforcement policy
The “control tool” auditors are looking for is DMARC at enforcement (p=quarantine or p=reject).
This is the answer they want to hear: “We have a p=reject DMARC policy that actively blocks all unauthorized email. This policy is managed by a team of experts on the OnDMARC platform that automates our SPF/DKIM, provides full visibility into all our senders, and gives us executive-level reports that we can share with you.”
A policy at enforcement is the only control that actively instructs the world’s email servers to block fraudulent email sent on your behalf. It’s the definitive answer that stops email spoofing and proves you are actively preventing BEC.
Get audit-ready in just a few weeks
The fastest, safest way to get from a “wrong answer” to a “right answer” is our Managed DMARC Compliance Service. We don’t just hand you a tool. We give you the team and the technology to get audit-ready, fast.
- We build your enforcement roadmap: Our experts analyze your live email data and build a custom plan to get you to p=reject quickly and safely.
- We provide the proof: The OnDMARC platform provides the clean, executive-level reporting you can hand directly to an auditor.
- We are your expert team: You get valuable access to our engineers who will guide you from setup to enforcement, a dedicated Customer Success Team to provide ongoing training and support, and proactive Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) to ensure you stay compliant.
Don’t wait for an auditor to find your compliance gap. Solve the problem before they even ask.
Get Started Today!
Learn more about 101domain’s Managed DMARC Services and let us do the heavy lifting for you. We handle policy setup, monitoring, and reporting so you can rest easy knowing your emails are secure.
