Domain name monitoring is essential for corporate brands
Domain name monitoring has become a must-have service for any brand with a strong digital presence. It can help protect your brand against threats by alerting you to 3rd party domain name registrations that contain (or sound like) your brand. These timely alerts allow you to take quick and decisive action to address potential domain name infringements or scams before they cause damage.
Domain name monitoring can also help protect your brand by alerting you to any changes that are made to existing domain names that contain your brand name. This can be useful because it allows you to ensure that any changes to these domains do not negatively impact your brand or your business.
Types of domain name abuse covered:
- Cybersquatting. The practice of registering well-known brands and trademark terms as domain names with the aim of selling them for a profit. For example, if you run brand.com.au, a cybersquatter may try to register “brand.net.au” in order to make a quick buck by selling it back to you.
- Typosquatting. The practice of registering a domain name that is confusingly similar to a well-known brand. Typically, it involves swapping two letters around. For example, a bad actor may register “brnad.com.au” and use this domain name as a phishing platform and attempt to scam your customers, suppliers or partners.
- Lookalike domains. Designed to trick Internet users by being visually similar to the legitimate domain name. A lookalike domain may swap an “a” for a “o”. For example, a bad actor may register “brond.com.au” and similar to typosquatting, may attempt to use this domain name in email phishing attacks to scam your customers.
- Punycode domains. Convert words that cannot be written in ASCII, into a Unicode ASCII encoding. Unicode characters can look the same to the naked eye but actually, be can be used to create a consumingly similar domain name. For example, you could swap a normal T for a Greek Tau: τ so a domain name like twitter.com could be copied with τwitter.com and be used in email or web-based scams.
What to look for in a good domain name monitoring tool?
A good domain name monitoring solution is an automated tool that detects domains containing the monitored term for gTLDs and country-code TLDs (ccTLDs). Coverage should be extensive in terms of the number of spaces monitored and where domain name spaces do not allow for Zone file monitoring, alternative techniques should be deployed. They should also work with accents and alphabets other than the Latin alphabet (IDNs), as well as typos or alternative visual or phonetic spellings. The reports produced should include domain names that are at the deletion stage. Automated enforcement options should be linked to the tool to simplify the process of enforcing your IP. Where an infringement is found, the tool should provide you with a comprehensive list of all domain names held by the same owner.
If you are interested in a domain name monitoring solution, download our domain name monitoring brochure here or contact us at info@brandsec.com.au
About brandsec
brandsec is a corporate domain name management and brand protection company that looks 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.
