Monitoring a Domain: How to Protect Your Online Assets

Every day, there’s a cybercriminal somewhere targeting a website name to exploit loopholes. They hijack identities, get sensitive data, or just taint a brand reputation. Phishing attacks alone have surged drastically, with 42% of malicious domains registered under gTLDs.

The financial impacts are staggering. Ransomware attacks have risen in value by 13%, costing victims an average of $1.85 million per incident. Still, DNS abuse accounts for 38% of all abuse-related investigations, underlining the need for vigilant domain monitoring.

Remember that your domain isn't just a web address; it epitomizes your brand's digital identity. Overlooking its security can cause devastating repercussions, like loss of customer trust, revenue, or legal issues. Proactive domain monitoring is your strategic imperative.

In this article, we discuss the best practices for domain monitoring and provide the best domain monitoring tools for reinforcing your online presence.

What is Domain Monitoring?

Domain monitoring is a dedicated cybersecurity process of constantly tracking several elements of your domain name to ensure its security, availability, and integrity. It entails tracking the domain's registration status, SSL certificates, WHOIS data, and expiry date. 

Domain monitoring helps you:

• Identify suspicious activities early, like domain hijacking, and act swiftly to prevent potential breaches.
• Help you adhere to industry cybersecurity and compliance regulations by maintaining correct and current domain data.

Methods of Domain Monitoring 

You can use several ways to detect threats, changes, and opportunities related to your domains.

These include:

1. WHOIS database monitoring

WHOIS database monitoring protects your domain. It actively tracks a domain's registration details. This includes the contact information, the registrant's name, and the registration and expiration dates. You can set alerts to detect unauthorized changes and prevent malicious activities like domain hijacking and malicious transfers.

Domain Monitor is an excellent tool to help you track WHOIS changes with important real-time updates. It also offers domain expiration monitoring including host and nameserver information and expiration dates for each domain. 

The tool also lets you check your domain’s reputation, malware, and active threats to ensure its security.

2. Tracking unauthorized changes and cyber threats

You need to be vigilant in monitoring your domain to promptly detect unauthorized changes and cyber threats. Here are key monitoring approaches to promote your domain's integrity and security.

• DNS monitoring: Consistently track your domain's DNS records to spot unauthorized alterations. Changes to your DNS records, like MX or CNAME, can maliciously redirect traffic or interrupt your email services.
• Phishing and spoofing protection: Attackers exploit vulnerabilities by creating misleading subdomains or imitating legitimate email addresses to deceive users. To reduce these threats, you should check your DNS records and email authentication methods. These include SPF, DMARC, and DKIM.
• SSL certificate monitoring: Ensures your sites' encryption details are valid and rigorous. Expired or incorrectly configured SSL certificates can potentially expose users to security risks and ruin trust. You should continuously track your certificate validity, user authenticity, and configuration to preserve secure connections and sensitive data.

3. Keeping an eye on SEO and blacklisting issues

Your domain's SEO health is important for online visibility. But, threats like spam, hacking, and blacklisting can gravely ruin your search engine rankings. 

Here are the strategies to monitor and prevent that.

• Domain monitoring tools like Bishopi and SEO tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to swiftly audit and address technical SEO issues.
• Monitor your backlink profile to identify and disavow harmful links that could negatively affect your SEO.
• Implement security measures, including SSL certificates and periodic software updates, to prevent unauthorized access.
• Periodically check for manual actions or security issues from the Google Search Console and handle them before they escalate.

4. Advanced strategies for more protection

To further strengthen your domain against complex cyber threats, consider implementing these advanced security measures for more brand protection.

Digital risk protection (DRP) solutions: About 90% of organizations face about 7.5 DNS attacks yearly. DRP helps you spot and address threats like brand impersonation, data leaks, and phishing attacks. Here’s how DRP works

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• Domain locking: Threat actors have hijacked over 35,000 domains in five years. Domain locking adds an extra layer of protection against domain hijacking, allowing only authorized changes to your domain settings. To lock your domain, go to your domain registrar's control panel. Find your domain and turn on the “Domain Lock” or “Transfer Lock” settings.
• Two-factor authentication (2FA): A Google study reports that adding an SMS as a second factor to a Google account can block 96% of bulk phishing and 76% of targeted attacks. Adding 2FA when you access your domain lowers the risk of unauthorized access, even if someone compromises your login details.

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Tools and Services for Effective Domain Monitoring

Protecting your domain transcends vigilance. You need the right tools to find harmful changes to your domain settings. This helps stop cyberattacks and keeps your online presence safe. The tools can also help you monitor domain name availability for better domain investment opportunities.

Here are the top tools and services to effectively monitor your domain.

1. Bishopi.io – Real-time domain and SEO monitoring

Bishopi offers AI-powered domain monitoring tools to help you extensively monitor your domain. Its Domain Monitor provides real-time alerts on domain changes, including WHOIS changes, expiration dates, and DNS modifications.

The Domain SEO Analysis tool also monitors metrics like domain authority and overall SEO trends. What's more, Brand Monitor keeps you on tabs as to when someone registers your trademarked name, mentions keywords related to your brand, or purchases a domain associated with your industry.

2. WHOIS monitoring tools

A tool like WHOIS Domain Lookup lets you access details such as the domain registrar, registration and expiration dates, name servers, registrant contact information, and more. You also get prompt alerts for any alterations for early detection.

3. Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster tools

Both platforms track your website's presence in search engines. You also get alerts on issues like indexing problems, security threats, or manual penalties for timely resolution. While both tools offer similar features, capitalizing on both gives you a more complete view of your site's search engine performance.

4. DNS monitoring tools

DNS monitoring with tools like Cloudflare and SecurityTrails helps you detect unauthorized changes and ensures your domain's DNS records are reliable. Early threat detection means you can quickly avert cyber threats that may exploit DNS weaknesses.

5. Blacklist checking services

These are services that scan various databases to examine if your IP or domain name is listed on any blacklist.

If your domain is blacklisted, your email may get marked as spam or entirely blocked, affecting your site's visibility. Domain name tools like MXToolbox and DNSchecker can help you scan your domain with reports showing whether your domain is listed and remediation steps.

Creating a Domain Monitoring Strategy

When you fail to have a proactive domain name monitoring strategy, you set yourself up for falling prey to hijacking, phishing, and brand impersonation. You need a solid plan for the early detection of these incidents and to preserve your audience's trust. Here’s how to do that:

1. Conduct regular audits

Periodic audits help preserve your domain integrity. Schedule regular reviews to examine DNS settings, SSL certificate validity, WHOIS data accuracy, and the overall health of your domain. These audits let you identify susceptibilities, obsolete data, or misconfigurations that could be exploited by malicious actors.

2. Develop an incident response plan (IRP)

IRP defines the process to follow when a security incident happens. For the IRP to be well-structured, ensure you:

• Establish roles and communication protocol with clear access to key tools and resources.
• Develop tracking systems to swiftly spot and examine incidents of unauthorized changes or suspicious domain activities.
• Isolate affected systems, revert unauthorized changes, and eradicate threats to further damage.
• Restore domain settings from backups, verify system integrity, and revive normal operations.
• Conduct a post-incident review to understand the root cause of the issue and update the IRP to address any identified gaps.

3. Collaborate with cybersecurity experts

Engaging with cybersecurity professionals gives you access to expert knowledge and resources. They can help you:

• Implement improved monitoring solutions
• Conducting comprehensive security evaluations
• Develop and refine incident response strategies

Stay Ahead with Smart Domain Monitoring

Domain monitoring is the foundation of your online brand identity. An effective one helps protect it against threats, preserve SEO performance, and maintain its reputation. So, domain best practices and automated tools are your best bet. 

And you cannot go wrong with the Bishopi’s domain monitoring tool that tracks domain availability with real-time alerts. Plus, the Domain SEO analysis tool monitors your SEO metrics, including popular industry trends.

Start protecting your online assets today. Sign up for a free trial today to explore the Bishopi tool suite.

FAQs

Why is it important to monitor a domain name system (DNS)?

Domain monitoring ensures your online services' security, performance, and reliability. It helps you spot unauthorized changes, intercept downtime, and protect against cyber threats like DNS hijacking. 

Who monitors domain names?

Domain names are monitored by domain owners and administrators, registrars, and third-party monitoring services.

How to fix a poor domain reputation?

To fix a domain reputation, you need to:

• Identify the cause
• Authenticate your emails
• Regularly clean your email lists
• Avoid sending unsolicited emails
• Use reputable email services