Summary
Ask anyone in a company about their domain management and the common answer is “it’s a total pain”. This white paper from Authentic Web sets out seven best practices for managing an enterprise domain portfolio, starting with IT. In short: use one corporate registrar, integrate it with your DNS provider, monitor domain health, add secondary DNS, right-size the portfolio, document or automate the process, and consider your own .brand TLD.
The seven practices at a glance
- Get all your domains (and your DNS) under a single source so you can see, control and manage them more easily.
- Connect your domain registrar to your DNS service to gain actionable business intelligence for the whole organization.
- Have an automated means to verify that all your domains’ resource record issues are identified for correction.
- Implement a secondary DNS infrastructure for redundancy.
- Analyze your domains and get rid of the ones you don’t need, to save money and reduce hassle.
- Define and document your process; the best way is to automate it with a change management system.
- Investigate having your own .brand TLD and start planning for the anticipated ICANN second-round applications.
The problem
The pain has distinct symptoms:
- Lack of process and clear ownership.
- No single point of visibility, control or change management over domains.
- Absence of useful domain and DNS data and business intelligence.
- Managing by Excel lists or emails to your registrar.
- Broken domain settings, including resource record issues.
Most IT managers operate without a corporate domain management system. They rely on retail registrars or various login portals for managed DNS edits. That works for registering and renewing domains and setting up zone files, A records and MX records, but little else. Enterprises tolerate this for years, but the pain is a warning sign:
- Inefficiency creates excess cost, errors and time cycles.
- Lack of business intelligence impairs effective decision making.
- Broken domains lose valuable web traffic and open potential security holes.
Practice 1: Use a single corporate registrar
Retail registrars such as GoDaddy and Network Solutions are fine for small businesses with a handful of domains. Enterprises with hundreds or thousands of domains have different needs. Domains spread across multiple registrars and separate DNS providers are a major management headache. Put all your domains and your DNS under a single source.
Practice 2: Integrate your domain registrar with your DNS provider
Domains and DNS data belong together. When they are kept separate, a lot of value falls through the cracks. Marketing wants to know which domains are gaining or losing traffic, and IT wants to know which of thousands of resource records fail to resolve without inspecting each one. Connecting the registrar to the DNS service gives actionable business intelligence to the whole organization.
Practice 3: Monitor your domain health
A review of several large global enterprises in finance, insurance and publishing found an astounding number of domains that fail to resolve, resolve incorrectly or display file errors. A company with just 500 domains can easily have 10,000 resource records, of which 40 to 60% may be incorrectly configured. Even allowing for parked domains you don’t care about, that error rate opens you up to many problems, many of them hidden. Use an automated means to find all resource record issues for correction.
Practice 4: Implement secondary DNS
DNS network failure is extremely rare, but it happens and the consequences can be catastrophic. A secondary DNS infrastructure is an inexpensive way to add redundancy and prevent painful, avoidable business outages.
Practice 5: Right-size your domain portfolio
The domain landscape used to be .com, .org, .net and a few ccTLDs. Then the new gTLDs exploded, and many companies registered large numbers of domains across multiple TLDs strictly for brand defense. Based on simple analytics, most enterprises can shed over 20% of their domain portfolio, along with the cost and management effort that comes with it. Analyze your domains and drop the ones you don’t need.
Practice 6: Document your process, or better yet, automate it
Managing a domain’s life cycle, from inception to approval to set up to perpetual renewal or expiry, is a process. Organizations function best when processes are documented, understood and followed, especially when several departments, stakeholders and operating entities are involved. Automated process management is more secure and reliable and ensures compliance. The second best way to establish an effective process is to define and document it; the best is to automate it with a change management system.
Practice 7: Acquire your own .brand TLD registry
Hundreds of new generic TLDs are available to enterprises, and the most exciting are brand TLDs. IBM, Canon and Audi have secured .IBM, .CANON and .AUDI. Owning a registry gives these brands unprecedented control and security as trusted spaces for their audiences, plus enhanced network authentication and other innovation possibilities. The paper expects brand TLDs to become table stakes for large brands: over 550 brands owned a TLD from ICANN’s first application round, and thousands were expected to follow in the next rounds. It recommends investigating the benefits and starting planning for the anticipated ICANN second-round applications.
Additional resources
- White paper: Market Information Report: New TLD Expansion Program
- Brand TLD updates: BrandTLD.news
- Case studies: live examples of IT best practices in domain management