Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) has included GMX, WEB.DE and mail.com in the second round of its Email Security Hall of Fame. Tobias Herkula of 1&1 Mail & Media announced it on LinkedIn after accepting the recognition on the company’s behalf.
The scheme began in 2025 as part of BSI’s Email Security Year, run with eco and Bitkom. Round one listed around 150 organisations that committed to implementing, or working towards, BSI’s technical guidelines on secure transport (TR-03108) and authentication (TR-03182). GMX and WEB.DE took Gold.
Round two asks for more than a pledge. Entrants needed DNSSEC live by 30 June 2026, and BSI checked. BSI says this round is the last.
BSI’s public E-Mail-Checker scores gmx.de at seven out of seven: SPF, DKIM, DMARC, DNSSEC, DANE, TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3. Three unweighted extras are marked unmet: MTA-STS, TLS reporting, and switching off TLS versions below 1.2. Anyone who has run a consumer mailbox service will have a guess about that last one.
The Hall of Fame changes nothing about filtering. The useful point for senders is DANE. It only protects mail from sending MTAs that check the TLSA records. If you send volume into Germany and yours doesn’t, that is a job you should really add to your list.
