As a business, you want your domain names to be memorable, reflect the company ethos and stand out in an overcrowded online world. Ensuring the domain resonates with customers, leads to more traffic and ultimately increased business.
However, as a critical element of your online presence, domains have also become a target for hackers, with domain security attacks and breaches taking several forms. So how can you stay protected?
Mitigate the risks
Most well-known brands are likely to see their domain or domains come under attack at some stage. The impact of a successful attack can lead to many unfortunate consequences such as lost consumer trust, compromised business and client information, and lost sales to name a few.
There are several steps which organizations need to take in order to mitigate the risks and consequences of any attack to their domains:
- Consolidate domain assets – Organizations must take a centralized global view of all their domains across all parts of their business, in all parts of the world. Consolidating all domains under one corporate-only registrar will help in this process.
- Lock domain names – At a minimum, all domains should be set to a locked status by default. Domain locking makes domains unavailable for transfer, modification or deletion unless authorized.
- Work with an experienced registrar – Corporate-only registrars have become very familiar with the potential attack strategies and social engineering techniques used by domain hackers over the years.
- Review account access – When accessing a domain or DNS management portal, all users should use a two-factor authentication process. Organizations should review all secondary users and assess whether to give them read-only access or only access to certain areas of a web portal, or whether they need access to the portal at all.
- Monitor critical domains – they should be constantly monitored for unauthorized updates, for any changes to web content, and for DNS cache poisoning. Continual monitoring means that any problems can quickly identified and remediated before any disruption or damage occurs.
- Expanding domain portfolios – While it is not likely to be necessary, or affordable for organizations to adopt every new extension, they need to assess the risk from cybersquatters who prey on well-recognized brands to steal traffic.
Vigilance is key
In a world where online is often the first point of call for information gathering, engaging and interacting with brands, it’s vital that you protect your domains. They are high-value business-critical assets and should be treated as such.
Attacks can come from variety of different sources, including online criminals, hacktivists and even disgruntled employees. However, whatever the source, you can minimize risks by understanding the possible threats and adapting a strategic approach to managing your domain portfolio.
Being vigilant is key, as is selecting the right registrar for the job. To learn more about the latest security attacks impacting brands and how to safeguard your business, read our recent report here.
