Domain Security: 7 Steps for Protecting Your Company’s Domain Name

According to SiteLock's analysis of seven million websites, an average website faces a staggering 94 cyberattacks each day.

This startling statistic underscores the critical importance of domain name security in today's digital world. Your company’s domain name is the centerpiece of your online presence and a key component of critical applications allowing you to do Internet business. It acts as an address for your company website, serving as your digital storefront, customer service desk, and primary gateway for customers to connect with your business in cyberspace. 
Given domain names' central role in connecting businesses with customers across the web, cyber adversaries are increasingly deploying attacks that attempt to hijack company domain names, manipulate Domain Name System (DNS) queries, or scam customers with spoofing and typosquatting.

To protect domain names against malicious cyber threats and safeguard the customer experience, businesses need effective domain name security that includes a combination of policies, controls, technologies, and visibility. 

In this blog, we’re taking a close look at the growing importance of domain security, along with best practices that you can follow to secure your company’s domain name.

What is Domain Name Security?

Domain name security is the practice of implementing security measures, controls, and technologies that protect your company domain name against malicious cyber threats.

A comprehensive approach to domain security should be multifaceted, covering everything from domain name registration and access controls, to DNS security, encryption, email authentication, and domain monitoring. 

A robust approach to domain protection can help prevent digital adversaries from gaining unauthorized access to your company domain, hijacking DNS requests to your domain, or executing successful domain/email spoofing attacks. 

Why is Domain Security Important?

The importance of domain security is in direct proportion to the diversity and potential impact of cyber attacks launched against company domains by digital threat actors. 

Here's why domain security is a must for business: 

• Effective domain security is critical for maintaining the privacy and reliability of sensitive data held within the domain, such as protecting customer information, financial records, and intellectual property from unwanted access or tampering.
• A secured domain is critical for protecting a company's reputation and credibility.
• Unsecured domains can harm brand image, undermine customer trust, and more.
• Cyber attacks can result in large financial losses, including both direct repair expenses and indirect costs like reputational harm.
• For e-commerce businesses, domain security is essential for securing online transactions and protecting sensitive financial information.

7 Best Practices to Secure a Domain Name

From domain hijacking to typosquatting, social engineering, spoofing, and DDoS attacks, cyber adversaries have a wide variety of techniques available for compromising or exploiting your company domain name. 

The best practices described below will help your organization get started with a comprehensive approach to domain security that protects your organization, employees, and customers against a variety of domain-based cyber attacks.

1. Choose a Reputable Domain Registrar to Avoid Registrar Hacking

Domain name registrars are companies that manage domain name registrations and map domain names to IP addresses. Registrars must be accredited by a domain name registry operator and administer domain name registrations based on the guidelines they provide. 

If the designated registrar for your company domain name is hacked, cyber attackers may be able to gain administrative access to your domain and divert your web traffic to a malicious website. 

The first step to shoring up your domain name security should always be choosing a reputable domain name registrar with accreditation from registry operators and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Even better, choose a registrar who can demonstrate investment and expertise in cybersecurity, including controls, processes, technologies, and staff training.

1. Register Lookalike Domain Names to Secure Domain Names from Typosquatting

Typosquatting is when a cyber adversary registers a domain name that is similar to yours but contains a common spelling error that your customers might make when attempting to access your website.

Typosquatting allows the cyber adversary to divert traffic away from your website to a malicious domain that they control. The malicious domain might attempt to install malware/ransomware on their machine, steal their access credentials for your company website, or gain access to their personal data.

The easiest way to secure a domain name against typosquatting and domain spoofing attacks is to register look-alike domains yourself and redirect them to your company’s real website. Registering these domains on your own means that they can’t be registered by cyber adversaries who would use them to divert traffic away from your website and potentially scam your customers.

When registering lookalike domains, consider purchasing domains that contain misspellings of your company name, singular and plural versions, hyphenations, and generic top-level domains like .com, .info, .net, and .org.

1. Prevent Domain Hijacking with Auto-Renew Feature

Domain hijacking, also known as domain theft, is a type of account takeover attack where a cyber adversary gains unauthorized access to your company's domain control panel. Digital threat actors can hijack your domain by:

• Hacking the email account associated with the domain registration,
• Impersonating your company and convincing your domain registrar to transfer ownership of the domain to another person/registrar,
• Targeting your organization with malware, such as a keylogger that allows cyber adversaries to spy on your employees and steal access credentials to your domain,
• Targeting your employees with phishing emails that attempt to manipulate them into disclosing access credentials for your domain.

To mitigate the risk of domain hijacking, it's crucial to choose a registrar that offers the option to register your domain for the longest possible time and enable auto-renewal features. By selecting a registrar that allows you to register your domain for an extended period, you reduce the frequency of renewal tasks, minimizing the chances of inadvertently letting your domain registration lapse. 

Additionally, enabling auto-renewal ensures that your domain registration is automatically renewed before it expires, preventing opportunistic cyber attackers from seizing control of your domain during a lapse in registration. This proactive approach adds an extra layer of defense against domain hijacking attempts, safeguarding your online presence and preserving your brand's integrity.

1. Secure Access to Your Domain

Securing access to your domain control panel and controlling user permissions are important steps to preventing domain hijacking attacks. Most registrars offer features like two-factor authentication and IP validation that can help verify the identity of a user logging into your domain control panel.

A number of employees at your organization may require access to your domain control panel to fulfill their job duties, but only trusted individuals should be assigned elevated permissions to modify staff permissions or implement DNS configuration changes.

Cyber attackers may attempt to gain access to your domain control panel by contacting your domain name registrar and impersonating your business. Your registrar should prevent these attacks by following your authorized contact policy and implementing DNS changes only when requested by trusted, verified individuals at your company.

1. Fortify Your DNS Security

DNS Spoofing is when an unauthorized cyber adversary exploits the DNS system to change the responses to DNS queries and divert web traffic from the target domains. 

Cyber adversaries can execute a DNS spoofing attack by intercepting and modifying DNS requests (proxying), blocking DNS requests to a target domain and sending a fake DNS reply (DNS injection), or altering records in the DNS system (cache poisoning).

As with other domain-based attacks, redirecting traffic to an attacker-controlled domain allows the adversary to steal data, spread malware, or defraud victims.

The best way to strengthen your defenses against DNS spoofing and related DNS attacks is by enabling the DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) for your organization’s DNS servers.

DNSSEC adds data origin authentication and data integrity protection to the core DNS protocol, cryptographically verifying both the identity of the sender and the integrity of the data received. These features make your domain less susceptible to DNS attacks.

1. Validate Emails with DMARC

Email spoofing tricks the recipient of an email into thinking that it came from your official company domain, when it was really sent by a cyber adversary. Cyber adversaries can create spoofed email in several ways, mainly by forging the sender address, a practice made possible by the lack of built-in authentication in the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP).

Email spoofing exploits your domain name to earn the trust of the recipient, making them more susceptible to social engineering attacks that aim to steal their data or infect their machines with ransomware.

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) is a protocol that leverages the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) standards to validate the authenticity of email communications and protect against email spoofing attacks that impersonate your domain.

With SPF, your company can detail the specific IP addresses that are authorized to send mail on behalf of your domain. Recipients of emails from your company can compare the sender’s IP address to those listed on your SPF records. When the addresses match, the email is determined to be authentic. With DKIM, individual email messages are cryptographically signed and can be authenticated by the recipient on arrival. 

ZeroFox can further enhance your organization’s email security with AI-driven processing and evaluation of DMARC authentication failure reports, enabling the detection and disruption of cyber attack infrastructure.

1. Implement Domain Monitoring and Protection to Secure From Domain Spoofing

Domain spoofing is when a cyber adversary creates a copy of your website on a domain that they control and impersonates your brand in an attempt to scam your customers. 

Cyber adversaries can spoof a domain by replacing characters in the URL with characters from other languages or Unicode characters that closely resemble ASCII characters. Once the spoof domain is up and running, cyber adversaries may launch a phishing campaign to manipulate your customers into visiting the fake website.

When your customers are fooled by a domain spoofing attack, they may unknowingly provide the attackers with sensitive personal data or compromise secure login credentials by entering them on the attacker’s website. 

Domain monitoring uses AI-driven processes to monitor the public attack surface, detect domains associated with your company, brand, and executives that you don’t own, and provide recommendations to safeguard the customer experience and avoid damaging security incidents.

ZeroFox Domain Protection leverages artificial intelligence to detect and identify typosquatting and domain phishing attacks that target your brand, employees, and customers. Once detected, ZeroFox works on your behalf to takedown fraudulent cyber attacker infrastructure and discourage future domain spoofing or impersonation attacks against your brand community.

Our Recommendations to Safeguard Your Domain 

To secure a domain name, we recommend:

• Choosing a Reputable Domain Name Registrar
• Registering your domains for the longest term possible - usually up to ten years
• Turning on the Auto-Renew feature
• Registering your company’s domain name directly to the corporation instead of to an individual
• Registering your company’s domain name with a company credit card instead of an individual person’s payment information
• Registering lookalike domains
• Enabling domain privacy protection to exclude your personal data from the WHOIS directory
• Enabling Registry Lock, a security feature that requires your registrar to manually verify any requested changes to your DNS records
• Using a stronger password that is hard to guess
• Using 2-factor authentication

What to Do If Your Domain Is Hijacked

Discovering that your domain has been hijacked can be a nightmare scenario for any website owner. However, it's essential to remain calm and take immediate action to regain control of your digital assets. Here's a step-by-step guide on what to do if your domain is hijacked:

1. Stay Calm and Assess the Situation

The first step is to remain composed and carefully evaluate the situation. Confirm whether your domain has indeed been hijacked by checking its registration details and DNS settings.

1. Contact Your Domain Registrar Immediately 

Upon confirming the hijacking, contact your domain registrar without delay. Inform them of the situation and request their assistance in resolving the issue. Most registrars have a support team in place to help domain owners recover hijacked domains.

1. Report the Incident to ICANN

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) oversees domain name management and can provide guidance in cases of domain hijacking. Contact ICANN's Security Team and provide them with details of the incident. They may offer valuable assistance and resources to facilitate the recovery process.

1. Initiate Transfer Reversal Procedures 

Request that your registrar initiate transfer reversal procedures to revoke any unauthorized transfers of your domain. This may involve submitting documentation or evidence to prove your ownership of the domain and the illegitimacy of the transfer.

1. Change All Passwords and Secure Your Accounts 

As a precautionary measure, change the passwords for all accounts associated with your domain, including your registrar account, hosting account, and email accounts. This helps prevent the hijacker from gaining access to other sensitive information or causing further harm.

1. Utilize Dispute Resolution Mechanisms 

If your domain registrar is unresponsive or unable to assist in the recovery process, consider utilizing dispute resolution mechanisms such as the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP). This allows for a formal arbitration process to resolve disputes regarding domain ownership.

1. Maintain Open Communication and Follow-Up 

Stay in regular communication with your registrar and any relevant authorities throughout the recovery process. Follow up on any actions taken and provide any additional information or documentation requested. Persistence and proactive communication are key to expediting the resolution.

1. Implement Additional Security Measures 

Once you have regained control of your domain, implement additional security measures to prevent future hijacking attempts. This may include enabling two-factor authentication, regularly monitoring your domain settings, and keeping your contact information up to date.

Enhance Domain Security and Counteract Digital Adversaries with ZeroFox

ZeroFox provides enterprises protection, intelligence, and disruption to dismantle domain-based threats to brands, people, and assets across the public attack surface. 

ZeroFox combines proactive Domain Monitoring to detect and prevent a variety of domain-based cyber attacks, helping your business securely engage with customers, avoid damaging security breaches, and fight back against malicious cyber adversaries.

Ready to learn more? Schedule a domain protection demo today!