5 Effective Tips to Keep Your Domain Safe from Hackers

Keeping your domain name safe and secure in the increasingly unpredictable online world is paramount nowadays, especially when you consider what a hacker can achieve by taking hold of your domain. In a nutshell, allowing an online attack to seize control of your domain name can spell disaster for your brand as a whole, as this can completely ruin your reputation and even set the stage for lengthy legal disputes if your customers sue you for losing their sensitive information. Needless to say, you can’t let this happen to you, which is why you need to elevate your cybersecurity measures.

Fortunately, there are numerous security measures you can employ to protect your domain, ranging from choosing the right registrar that provides stellar domain security, all the way to handling suspicious emails and keeping your log-in information safe. Let’s explore the best solutions in greater detail to help you keep your domain safe from hackers.

Choose your registrar carefully

First and foremost, you need to choose the right registrar that can guarantee the safety of your domain should you choose to buy it from their online database. Aside from the concrete solutions that the registrar should provide to its clients, which we will delve into later, it should also have a proven track record and a portfolio of satisfied clients – all of which you should be able to get in contact to ascertain the truthfulness of their testimonials and reviews. However, choosing a registrar is not just about trusting the word of their satisfied clients, it’s also about hearing out their former clients as well.

You can run a quick online search or join a cybersecurity forum to check out the companies that used to work with the registrars you’re considering, but have since moved on to a different provider. Be sure to get in touch with these clients and post relevant questions on forums where people can share their in-depth experience with the registrar.

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Opt for the registry lock service

Some domain providers will offer this as a part of their standard package, others will ask you to buy this feature separately, but whatever the case may be, you should put your domain name under a registrar lock. This simple yet effective feature will lock up your domain completely and make it impossible to change any information without your explicit consent. To alter any domain information, you will first have to unlock the domain with the registrar.

Once you have locked your domain, it’s still important to check on it from time to time in order to see if any information has been changes without you knowing. If you notice anything out of place, be sure to notify the registrar immediately so that they can retrieve your domain, minimize any damage done to your brand, and potentially locate the culprits.

Make sure your domain is kept safe

While many solutions that you employ do boil down to your own ability to track domain activity and keep your information safe from hackers, the only way to keep your domain truly safe is to choose the right registrar. Concretely, your registrar should provide you with numerous domain name security features that will protect you from spam, phishing attacks, and social engineering, online abuse, hackers, and more. 

Your registrar needs to provide you with meticulous spam monitoring along with phishing and malware monitoring that will further enhance the security of your domain and your entire business in the online world. Even though you might think that you’re well-equipped to spot social engineering or cybercrime yourself, keep in mind that hackers are nowadays using sophisticated tools, which is why you need a registrar with a dedicated security team at your side. 

Keep your domain information private

Another optional feature that you should take advantage of is domain information privacy. This is a simple yet highly effective solution that allows you to hide sensitive domain information from the public eye. You should guard your account information even from your employees who are not directly associated with your IT department or site management, because the more people know your domain info, the higher the chances that some of it will leak into the public domain. Make sure that only your key employees know your account information, and don’t forget to change your password when an employee leaves the company. 

Be wary of email phishing attacks

One of the common ways that domain names get stolen is through nefarious email activity, or specifically, through social engineering and malware emails that can take over your entire system, including your domain. For example, phishing emails often look like your standard registrar emails that are notifying you of special promotions or are asking you to update your account information – which means that you need to log in first. 

The emails themselves look exactly like the emails from your registrar, which is why you need to have the aforementioned spam and phishing monitoring teams in place. What’s more, keep in mind that there is no need to click on any links in an email, because you can simply type the URL directly into the search box.

Wrapping up

Domain safety should be one of your top priorities in 2020 and going forward, especially now that the risks of cyber-attacks are greater than ever before. Be sure to leverage these tips to elevate the security of your domain name and safeguard your brand’s reputation in the competitive online world.

Jolene Rutherford

Jolene Rutherford is a marketing specialist – turned blogger. Interested in digital marketing and new technology trends. Love sharing content that can help and inform people.