Where the quality of the management of a critical asset, such as domain names, is dependent on the quality of an individual, you significantly increase the likelihood of a human-related incident.
Domain Names are at the top of the apex in terms of business asset criticality. If your business domain name is compromised all services associated with it go down – web, mobile, payments, sub-domains, email. Managing your own business domains is inherently risky, especially when large portfolios are created over time.
There are many examples of brands who have accidentally let their critical domains expire and it impacts brands of all size. Adobe, Microsoft, and recently Google to name a few have all been impacted by expiration events.
Domain Names – A Managed Service
Domain portfolio management as a service is not something many people think about until they need it. The basics of a domain name management service is ensuring that your domain names don’t expire, reducing the admin associated with the function, and addressing any gaps and threats in, and to your portfolio.
Removing Human Errors from Domain Portfolio Management
It is not unusual for a business to say “we have this under control”, meaning that a thoughtful and organised team member is doing a good job keeping everything up to date and ensuring domains are renewed on time.
This is great, and with these people looking after your domains an incident is unlikely, but what happens when this person takes a holiday? Or changes roles? Will the new person apply the same diligence and attention to detail? and will the function be seamlessly handed over?
Where the quality of the management of a critical asset, such as domain names, is dependent on the quality of an individual, you significantly increase the likelihood of a human-related incident. Domain portfolio management inherently creates a succession plan for your business so that no matter what internal changes occur, the domain and DNS functions will work seamlessly.
Some of the common human-related (Self-managed) domain name incidents include:
- Distraction: Responsible officer was distracted by other work and forgot to renew a business domain name.
- Staff changes: A change of personnel and a poor handover meant that the domain name function was not being managed, resulting in a domain name expiry event.
- Change of credit card: Automatic credit card payment details are not kept up to date resulting in a non-renewal of a domain name.
- Wrong domain details: Old contact details are not updated resulting in a missed renewal email.
- Not your domain: Often marketing companies will register domains on behalf of their clients, but when the engagement is over sometimes these domains are not transferred and expire.
- Multiple Registrars: A business uses multiple Registrars to manage their portfolio resulting in confusion and an expired domain name.
- Poor security practices: Domain accounts are compromised due to poor security controls, resulting in a hacking or hijacking incident.
Example of an At-Risk Domain Name Portfolio (example only)
Below is an example of what a portfolio looks like where the company does not use a domain name portfolio managed service. It is a high-risk portfolio and the risk characteristics are described below.
Mitigating Risks
Domain Portfolio Management as a service incorporates systems, redundancies and systematic monitors, business continuity plans coupled with specialist account management that ensures all of your domain names renew on time, are protected against internal and external threats and prevent human-related domain name errors.
It is relatively inexpensive and means that as a business your people can focus on other tasks without the worry that your domain names might expire. A managed domain portfolio service also means tasks such as DNS delegations, NS updates, whois information is managed and kept up to date by experts in this field.
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.