A domain, much like a diamond, is precious. It’s your unique address, the key to your content, and it’s your brand’s online identity. Maybe you use your website to sell gig tickets, run online conferences, or showcase your latest product. If your domain suddenly stops working, no matter what business you run, you could rapidly lose income, damage your brand’s reputation — or worse.
In this article, you’ll discover why domain security matters and how you can ensure you are doing everything you can to secure your domain name.
Why my domain is not secure
Cybercrime is always on the rise. According to Cybersecurity Ventures, global cybercrime costs are expected to reach $10.5 trillion annually by 2025. As technologies evolve, hackers and criminals also update their methods which is why domain security is so important.
Online security threats include:
- Phishing attacks — you receive an email from a hacker posing as your registrar, clicking on a link where you proceed to enter personal data.
- Pharming attacks — also known as domain hijacking, pharming is where your website traffic is redirected to somewhere else, with the aim of stealing your sensitive data.
So to combat the threats we find at every turn of the way, domain ownership protection is necessary. You can learn more about how domain names are hijacked in our article, Domain phishing, and other security attacks.
What is full domain protection?
To make your domain secure, it’s important to introduce the right practices that will reduce risk. The dangers of railing to sufficiently protect your domain include hackers redirecting your traffic, dodgy emails, a nasty virus, or human error.
If your site momentarily goes down for any length of time, you and your customers could suffer financial loss, and your reputation may be damaged in the process. Understandably, when customers feel they can’t trust your website, their data is at risk, they’re unlikely to return, and they will most likely warn others.
Aside from a damaged reputation and temporary financial loss, here are some worrying scenarios that may occur should your domain be accessed without your authorization:
- DNS changes (nameservers or host records) — instead of landing on your website as intended, your customer may see an error page or malicious content.
- Domain deletion — your customer will see an error page instead of your website. Once a domain is deleted, it will cost you money to recover it.
- Whois contact information change — while this is not something that will impact your website performance, it may be the first stage of someone hijacking your domain. If someone else’s contact information is listed for your domain, it’s harder to prove that you are the actual owner — and may be a sign that someone is trying to transfer your domain out.
- Domain transfer out — not only will your website not load, but you’ll lose access to your domain, meaning that you can’t change any settings. It can take some time to file a dispute to try recovering your domain, and you could end up paying huge legal fees.
- Accidental domain expiration — whether your domain has expired due to issues with payments or the auto-renew feature has been disabled, your website won’t load, and if the domain is not reactivated in time, it will cost money to recover it.
- Failing to use domain privacy — hackers may use your personal data listed in Whois to impersonate you. They might try stealing your domain or using it for malicious purposes. Plus, without domain privacy, your personal details, such as your phone number and email address, are openly available for marketers to contact you.
So if you were wondering, “do I need domain protection”, then you only need to look at the difficulties that could be caused when a domain is not secure.
Domain protection strategy
If you have a website and a domain, then the value of domain protection should be a high priority. We all know that the abovementioned risks could cause costly disruptions to any web project.
The next step is to consider how to develop a strategy and best practices for domain protection. We will look at this on three separate levels: the customer account level, the domain level, and the domain name system (DNS) level.
Customer account level
If you want to use any service or product on the Internet, you will almost always have to create an account. The same goes for customers looking for their domain.
When securing a domain account, it’s painstakingly vital to consider password creation and rotation. Other features that may help keep your domain secure are two-factor authentication and limiting the IP addresses that can access your account.
Password creation and rotation
It is recommended that passwords be rotated at least every three to six months when a security breach occurs, if you believe your device may have been compromised, and if there is evidence of unauthorized access to your account. Try How secure is my password? to find out how strong your password is. It tells you how long it would take a computer to crack your password!
Two-factor authentication (2FA)
Enabling two-factor authentication (2FA) is a simple way to help keep your account safe. It requires two authentication factors to verify who you are before account access is granted. As well as your usual password, you may also need a mobile app, SMS verification, or a physical authentication key to prove who you are.
Limiting specific IP address access
Another way to protect your domain name is only to grant account access to specific IP addresses. This clever security measure allows you to allow specific locations, such as your home or work IP addresses, to be marked as safe. If an unauthorized IP address is seen to be attempting to gain access, it will not be granted.
Domain level
Now that we’ve covered how you can protect your account, it’s time to learn how to secure a website domain. This includes keeping on top of your domain status, understanding privacy services, registry, and registrar locks, preventing malicious actors, preventing accidental domain expiration, and enabling 2FA for domain modifications.
Domain status notifications
Did you know that you can set up alerts to notify you if any changes are made to your account or domain? At WashaHost, our security alerts keep our customers posted on activities such as login attempts or changes in domain settings such as address or Host Records updates.
Privacy service
Many registrars offer a free or paid domain privacy service that hides your contact information in Whois. This is a basic and essential feature that can prevent marketing companies and online fraudsters from knowing details like your email address, postal address, and phone number.
At some registrars, domain privacy is a paid-for service and comes with a high price tag. When a registrant chooses to register a domain through WashaHost, private domain registration is offered with every eligible domain — that’s free lifetime protection for our customers.
Registrar lock
Another essential feature is a registrar lock. This feature prevents a domain name from being transferred to another registrar and can be managed in your registrar account.
Registry lock
Often a paid feature, a registry lock prevents transfers to other registrars, domain deletion, and nameserver changes. It can’t be managed in your registrar account, but only on the registry side. If you have a valuable and precious domain, it’s a necessary feature that will ensure that critical changes don’t happen to your domain without your explicit authorization.
Trademarks and typo-blocking
Another way to protect your domain is to block the registration of your trademark across multiple top-level domains (TLDs). This includes blocking your trademark from being registered with adult TLDs such as .xxx. You can also block the registration of misspelled domain names which can help combat typosquatters.
Web threat lists
Google Safe Browsing looks at billions of URLs every day to determine if websites are unsafe for users. If a website is considered dangerous to visit, it may be de-indexed by Google. Using the site status checker, you can determine if your website has been flagged as unsafe.
Extended grace period
Typically, if a domain is not renewed on time, it will stop working on the day of expiration. Also, no changes can be made, and all connected services will stop. An extended grace period is an extra protection mechanism that grants you more time to renew your domain while keeping your services running.
Domain name system (DNS) level
The domain name system (DNS) is often described as the Internet telephone book. It translates domain names into IP addresses.
Domain name system security extensions (DNSSEC)
DNSSEC authenticates the resolution of IP addresses. When you enter your domain name, DNSSEC adds cryptographic signatures to DNS data, which confirms the authentication of the website you intend to visit.
PremiumDNS
At WashaHost, we offer PremiumDNS, which can be used with any domain, ensuring that your domain runs smoothly and remains free of issues. The service offers customers 100% DNS uptime, secures look-ups, and prevents fake site re-directs.
Other security practices
- Set up auto-renewal: Make domain management simple with auto-renewal, and never let your domain expire!
- Avoid delegating domain management: In an ideal world, you (the business owner) would be the only person that has access to your domain.
- Use antivirus and anti-spyware: Antivirus software protects you from viruses that may modify your programs.
- Email vigilance: Cybercriminals often use emails to gather personal information, steal bank details, or attach viruses.
- Use a Virtual private network (VPN): Virtual private networks create encrypted connections that mask your IP address.
- Domain Vault: Coming soon to WashaHost is Domain Vault, a specialist security suite designed to lock your domains safely away from scammers, hijackers, and hackers.
Is full domain protection worth it?
In this article, we’ve covered some of the best security features to use to ensure your domain is kept safe. It’s not just your information that is at risk. It’s also your customer’s information that could be in danger, as well as your reputation as a brand. By now, you will have realized just how important it is to get full domain protection. So if you’re still asking “should I buy domain protection?”, the answer should be a resounding “yes.”
