Proofpoint MX Record Instructions

Changing Proofpoint Essentials MX Records

Important: Don't change MX records for any domain other than the one listed in your activation email. You can add additional domains to the service and change their records later.

Important: DO NOT complete or start this step if you are not ready to start passing emails through ProofPoint, misconfiguration of this step can cause mail to not be delivered properly.

Important: Before changing your MX records over to ProofPoint, ensure your current MX TTL is reduced to 1800 (30 minutes) or 3600 (1 hour). Failure to do this can cause DNS propagation to take longer than expected.

You will need to add two new MX records to your domain's DNS. Proofpoint provides two MX records for redundancy purposes.

If you are setting up Integrated Deployment, please skip MX records and go straight to SPF and DKIM.

Once you are ready to move over to ProofPoint, you'll need to update your DNS records, specifically, your MX records. You'll need to create the following two records once you are ready to start filtering emails through ProofPoint.

Add New SPF record to your DNS

When sending outbound email through the Proofpoint Essentials gateway, recipients receive mail sent from Proofpoint Essentials rather than your mail service provider. If the recipient's mail service attempts to verify that the message came from your domain, it must confirm that the gateway server is an authorized mail server for your domain. Adding a new Proofpoint Essentials SPF record to your domain's DNS will ensure that your organizations emails are accepted.

1. Add a new SPF record to the DNS record for your domain.
   • Use the information below (Source: Connection Details)
     • Type: TXT
     • Name: @
     • Data/Value: v=spf1 a:dispatch-us.ppe-hosted.com ~all
     • TTL: 1 hour

• Some field names may be slightly different depending on who you use to manage your domains DNS records.

Be cautious when combining an existing SPF record with the new SPF information for Proofpoint Essentials, be sure to validate that you are using the proper syntax. For example, if combining the Microsoft 365 SPF record and Proofpoint, it will look like this: v=spf1 a:dispatch-us.ppe-hosted.com include:spf.protection.outlook.com ~all

Verify changes to DNS Record

Once you added the new MX records to your domain's DNS, you will need to verify that the changes are visible to Proofpoint Essentials.

1. Under Account Management, click Domains.
2. Click Domain Health Check.
3. Under the MX records section, locate the new Proofpoint Essentials MX records that were recently added.
   • You can safely ignore any warnings you may see. If you can identify the Proofpoint Essentials MX records, you have verified that the DNS changes were successful.
   • If you do not see the MX records, try again in 1 hour and repeat until verified.