Email Infrastructure Choice Predicts Security Posture

+22.7pp DMARC uplift from proxy services — Provider hierarchy analysis across 35,862 domains

  • Email Security Proxy users lead with 97.3% SPF and 75.7% DMARC
  • Enterprise Cloud (Google/M365) follows at ~93% SPF but only ~60% DMARC
  • Budget hosting providers trail significantly — some below 10% on both metrics
  • Proxy uplift: +8.1pp SPF, +22.7pp DMARC vs non-proxied domains

Security by Provider Category

CategoryDomainsSPFDMARCGap

Gap = SPF minus DMARC adoption. A large gap indicates organizations with basic records but no enforcement policy.

Provider Scatter: SPF vs DMARC

Bubble size = domain count. Enterprise • Proxy • Budget • Gov/Edu

Gateway Service Distribution 4,111 proxied domains

ServiceDomainsSPFDMARC

Proxy Uplift: Before & After

MetricProxiedNon-ProxiedUplift
"Organizations using email security proxies are nearly 50% more likely to have DMARC enforcement than those without — the strongest single predictor of email security posture in the dataset." MonitorWorkspace, March 2026

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