What is Domain Name Management?
At its basic domain name management is a managed service, to ensure that all of your domain names are effectively administered, compliant and remain risk-free from issues and mistakes. This includes ensuring that:
- All of your domain names are in one place (centralized).
- All of your domain names are renewed on time;
- Your domain name portfolio security is optimized;
- Your domain names contact information is kept up to date;
- The financial administration of your domain names is simplified; and
- Your domain name licenses remain compliant for each jurisdiction (e.g Australia, New Zealand, China etc)
Why Domain Name Management?
If you have a large domain portfolio, chances are that they mostly renew on different dates. This creates a headache to keep up with renewals and avoid domains accidentally expiring.
Domain Name Management companies like brandsec have robust systems and processes in place to ensure all of your domain names renew on time.
The key benefits of Domain Name Management are:
- Less work: A domain name management service reduces your admin and time on this function by over 95%.
- Less risk: Domain names are automatically renewed, monitored, and can be locked at both the Registrar and Registry level.
- Improved Security: Domain Name Management providers conduct regular user audits and utilise best-practice security technology not always available through regular Registrars.
- Continuity of Service: Often domain name administrators change roles or go on extended leave. A domain name management service creates an environment of continuity despite who is (or is not) in the role.
Case Studies – When DIY domain name management fails
In April of 2013, The 22nd largest bank in the United States Regions Bank with 1,700 branches and 2,400 ATMs across a 16-state network failed to renew their domain name. As a result, their online operation went down including their website, online banking, email and all associated applications. Online services did not fully recover until a week later.
Originally, Regions Bank released a statement that they were experiencing intermittent network issues that are impacting some customers’ ability to access our website; however, the real reason behind this blackout was the domain name regions.com was allowed to expire. It had a significant impact on the bank, its customers, and the staff involved in the administration of the bank’s domain names.
It is a cautionary tale about the importance of Domain Name Management as a service, and this example is more common than you may think. Other famous domain name expirations include:
- Google accidentally failed to renew google.com.ar (April 2021)
- Microsoft once forgot to renew passport.com and later hotmail.co.uk
- Foursquare.com forgot to renew their domain just after raising $10M
- Coca-Cola forgot to renew coke.com
- American Express forgot to renew americanexpress.com
- Goldman Sachs Group, goldmansachs.com
- Berkshire Hathaway, berkshirehathaway.com
- MetLife, metlife.com
- Delta Air Lines, delta.com
- FedEx, fedex.com
Summary
Even the largest and most technologically advanced businesses are not immune to accidentally expiring their domain names. The impacts of a domain expiration can be significant and the solution so simple – engage a domain name management provider to administer the renewal of your most important digital assets, your corporate domain names.
About brandsec
Brandsec is a corporate domain name management and brand protection company that look after many of Australia, New Zealand and Asia’s top publicly listed brands. We provide monitoring and enforcement services, DNS, SSL Management, domain name brokerage and dispute management and brand security consultation services.