Your entire online business including websites, emails among others could be hijacked if you ignore one of the important element of securing your domain.We hate to break this to you but even the police or local authorities may do very little to protect you from this wave of cyber criminals and the best protection you can have is you taking precautionary measures to secure your domain.
In this post we shall share with you what domain hijacking means and how best you can secure your business domain against online theft as we have always done in our previous articles.
What Domain Hijacking means
Domain Hijacking can simply mean stealing your domain or another person taking control of your domain.
Once someone has taken control of your domain, can be able to change your name-servers, DNS(Domain Name System) records also change its administrative, billing contacts and at worst which is a common trait among cybercriminals they will transfer the domain to another registrar under their own management.
How can you prevent Domain Hijacking
1.Change your registrar password regularly
Just like the way you always alternate your logins to social media accounts, phone and even bank accounts, make it a point to change your registrar account at least every 90 days.
2. Register your domain with a verified domain registrar company
Go daddy, Network Solutions, Enom are among to some of the popular domain registration companies that you should consider registering your domain with and its always important to check out a companies reviews from other registrars before you opt to register your domain.
3.Keep your WHOIS/ contact information up-to date
Having your domain information such as email, address, phone contact updates adds an extra layer of security to your domain, in that you are able to receive communications upon any changes to your domains but its only as effective as the details you have added.
4. Turn on Domain Locking in your registrar account.
Almost all registrar companies have implemented the domain locking feature which prevents unauthorized domain changes including domain transfers, name-server changes.
5. Enable Two-factor Authentication
We have seen Gmail and others implementing this extra layer of security to their services and this can be good for you as well if you don’t know how to set it up with your registrar request on how this can be implemented to your domain.
6. Use a Strong password for your account.
This is something that has been around for some time now it still remains one of the bullet proof ways you can secure your domain by setting up a password that contains alpha-numeric characters , special symbols.
7. Protect your WHOIS information
Most service providers will provide this at an extra cost which could probably go for around $5 but its worth in the long run.
This feature helps to mask your information such as address, email and any other personal data that may be traced to you.
We believe your domain is as important for your business and loosing it in most cases will affect your reputation if it has been used for malicious activity.
