How to manage and secure essential online business assets

Domain Name Management – Key challenges

Today, any large business is likely to have hundreds of domain names; many for individual products and services; and, quite likely, an even greater number of ‘protection’ names, close to those it uses to avoid confusion or malicious exploitation.

Each domain must be registered with a domain name registrar and contact details provided of the people responsible for that domain. Until a domain name is due for renewal, often several years hence, no further action is required. Domain name administration is out of sight and out of mind. That is, until registration lapses because the named contact has moved on and the registry’s renewal reminders disappear into the aether.

Couldn’t happen to you? Maybe not, but it has happened to some of the biggest names on the Internet. Keeping track of renewals is the most important task in domain name management, but not the only one. Businesses need to be proactive: registering additional names that could be used for ‘passing off’; anticipating business developments and registering relevant names; changing proposed product or service names if relevant domain names are already taken.

The list goes on. Essential as these tasks are, they are not core business and yet they demand skill and rigour. So there are powerful arguments for outsourcing your domain name management to a specialist service, one whose sole focus is domain name management on
behalf of its clients.