Millions of people rely on IP reputation to make sure their company’s email goes into their inbox and not the spam folder, they can shop online securely, and their account at Netflix or Hulu remains active. Without a strong IP reputation, these services may block users or prevent their logins altogether.
An IP reputation is a score based on the history of an Internet Protocol (IP) address. The more malicious activity an IP has been involved in, the lower its reputation will be. This score is used by email service providers, ISPs, network security appliances, and other systems to decide how to handle incoming communication.
While a positive reputation can help you avoid being blocked, a poor one can damage your brand and cost you money. To learn how to improve your IP reputation, check out these tips and tools to increase the likelihood that your communications will reach their intended recipients.
One of the best ways to keep your IP reputation high is by following good email marketing and online behavior practices. This includes sending emails to people who have given you permission, using a clean domain name, avoiding phishing or malware, and promptly responding to any complaints.
Another way to keep your IP reputation healthy is by keeping up with best practices for email delivery, such as using a warm list, sending consistent volumes of email, and minimizing bounce rates and spam trap hits. You can also use email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to authenticate your communications and prove that you are who you say you are.
You can also look up the reputation of your IP address or domain with many free reputation tools that are available online. Some examples include Google Postmaster Tools, Cisco Talos Intelligence, and ipQS. Google Postmaster Tools allows you to see how your emails are being treated by Microsoft’s filtering system and can help identify if there are any issues with deliverability. Cisco Talos Intelligence provides an aggregated reputation score for an IP or domain and can be a good resource to understand how an ISP views your emails.
IP reputation is dynamic and highly influenced by the actions of individuals and groups of bad actors. Because of this, static lists that are integrated into threat intelligence solutions, firewalls, and network appliances tend to be out-of-date almost as soon as they’re published. Real-time granular IP reputation intelligence is needed to discover the hard-to-spot malicious behavior of attackers and protect end users and enterprise networks.