A website domain name is one of the most important online assets a business can own. It is your business’s internet mail address and online business identity that you’ve spent countless resources perfecting.

With an annual cost of approximately just $15 to renew, the time and money spent renewing a domain name is well worth it.

Failure to renew your business’s domain name can result in it the domain name ending up on a ‘dropped domains’ website, potentially resulting in it falling into the hands of your competitor, a business with a similar name, or even cybercriminals looking to register and sell your domain.

Not only does this mean that you will lose your website, as well the time and money spent building and managing it, but it is also possible that you will lose all future emails that are routed to the domain name.

This may have a devastating effect on your business.

Unless you are using multi-factor authentication, the new owner of your domain name will also be able to access all online services signed-up to where an email address is required. The new owner can simply establish a new email service where they will receive password reset emails to reset the log-in details.

According to independent cybersecurity researcher Gabor Szathmari, this can include access to:

• confidential documents of former clients
• confidential documents of the former practice
• confidential email correspondence
• personal information of former clients

Preventing your domain name from being lost or taken by cybercriminals can be done through a couple of key preventative measures.

These include ensuring that you consistently renew the domain name and stay up to date on when the domain name is due to expire. This can be achieved by visiting the Domain Administration Ltd website and typing in your domain name.

It is also recommended that business owners secure their website by utilising multi-factor authentication and password management services.

For more information visit the Australian Cyber Security Centre website.

Source: Australian Cyber Security Centre | Don’t abandon your internet domain name to cybercriminals