INDUSTRY UPDATES
Digital certificates moving to a one-year term
As of September 1, 2020, Apple® decided to trust certificates for a 13-month period only. There’s been confusion over whether certificates issued prior to this date will be supported and if a two-year certificate will be trusted. We can confirm that Apple browsers WILL trust any certificate issued prior to September 1, 2020, although on this date, any certificate issued for a longer term will not be trusted. CSC will continue to offer two-year certificates until end of August.
APWG Phishing Activity Trends Report launched
The Anti-Phishing Working Group has released its latest report on phishing activity trends for Q1 2020, which has found:
- From mid-March, there have been a variety of COVID-19 themed phishing and malware attacks against workers, healthcare facilities, and the recently unemployed.
- The number of phishing sites detected in the first quarter of 2020 has increased by 3,617 since the last quarter of 2019.
- Webmail and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) users continued to be most targeted.
- 75% of all phishing sites now use secure sockets layer (SSL) protection.
- Phishing in Brazil was up 24% during Q1.
You can read the full report here.
IN THE NEWS
GoDaddy data breach confirmed
A data breach at GoDaddy® in October 2019 has affected around 28,000 customers. Read here.
COVID-19 business loans at risk of phishing
Only 13 out of 64 accredited financial institutions designated to deal with COVID-19 business stimulus loans have implemented domain-based message authentication, reporting, and conformance (DMARC), putting applicants at risk of phishing attacks. Read here.
Bulk domain registrations aid global spam campaigns
Cyber criminals are “weaponizing” domains by registering hundreds or thousands of domain names in bulk to support snowshoe spam campaigns and phishing or ransomware attacks. Read here.
DOMAIN UPDATES
General availability for dot gay delayed
The registry for .GAY announced delays in their launch of the new gTLD. The first Sunrise phase, for applicants with valid Trademark Clearinghouse filings, closed on March 31, 2020. The Limited Registration Phase, Sunrise B, began as planned on April 6, 2020 for all other trademark holders. Sunrise B will proceed indefinitely until a new General Availability (GA) date is determined—hopefully by mid-September. The first seven days of GA will still comprise the Early Access Phase, and associated pricing will apply. We will communicate new dates as soon as the registry announces an updated plan.
GA open for .COMPARE and .SELECT
General availability for .COMPARE and .SELECT opened on May 6, 2020. Any entity may apply, with domains offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Brands that find their products featured in online comparison sites and blogs may be interested in defensive registrations for exact matching domain names, or in their own comparison sites.
Sunrise registration closing for .DEALER
The first-come, first-served sunrise phase for .DEALER will close on May 28, 2020. Domains will be allocated on June 1, 2020. Industries that may want to consider registering a .DEALER domain include automobiles and trucks, farm machinery, construction equipment, garden goods, electronic goods, white goods, and industrial equipment.
Sunrise registration open for .CYOU
The sunrise phase for .CYOU opened on May 14, 2020 for any trademark holders with valid SMD files, and will close on June 13, 2020. Its big brother, .ICU, is the most popular of all new generic top-level domain (gTLD) registrations in the world with nearly 6.7 million domains, and .CYOU may follow in its footsteps.
If you’d like to receive a weekly update on all extensions, subscribe to our Weekly Launch Guide.
CSC NEWS
Five common issues in domain management and solutions
Look up “company forgot to renew domain name” on a search engine and you’ll see stories about the consequences of missing vital domain name renewals, failed services or infrastructure, lost revenue, lost business partners, wrecked reputation, hefty regulatory fines, and even the collapse of a business. The top five issues in domain management are:
- Missed renewals
- Domain management using multiple registrars
- Registry requirements and registering extensions
- Transferring domain names and service support
- Determining options to combat infringement.
In our latest article, we explore each of these issues and offer our solutions to help overcome them. Read it here.
All ABOUT.GOOGLE
Since February 2019, ABOUT.GOOGLE has consistently ranked in first or second place in the Alexa Top 1 Million; amazing for a .BRAND domain that was only created in August 2018, and whose website content had been migrated over from google.com/about in early 2019. Two things set ABOUT.GOOGLE apart:
- Its ranking held steady while other .BRAND domain names differed by the day
- It climbed to the top spot in the Alexa Top 1M in a handful of weeks post-migration while other .BRAND sites built up traffic and ascended the Alexa ranks over months, if not years.
We interviewed Google’s Product Strategy and Marketing Lead Christina Chiou Yeh to see how Google’s approach could inspire other brands. Read it here.
KBR Inc. endorses CSC
KBR Inc. is an American-born, global company operating in three major markets—energy, technology, and government solutions. CSC helps KBR with its global domain management—integrating new domain names into their system, divesting what’s not needed, and helping to invest in names they want to add. See their endorsement video here.
TECHNOLOGY UPDATES
Name server modifications for API
We are introducing the ability to modify name servers through our customer API. Users with the appropriate access can now change name servers for domain names under CSC management.
“Select all” option in domain portfolio
We have updated CSCDomainManagerSM with a “Select all” checkbox for users working in the ChromeTM browser. Checking this box will select all portfolio items displayed at the time (maximum 200) to improve the experience of selecting domain names for entry into a specific order flow.
Renewing imported certificates
You can now submit renewal orders for imported SSL certificate directly from the imported record in your SSL portfolio. This is more user-friendly and allows you to track your renewals better.
UPCOMING WEBINARS
LIVE: Industry update – June 4, 2020
Join our next Industry Update webinar, where our team will talk about the latest updates on SSL certificates.
On-demand: Anti-phishing
You can now view our most recent anti-phishing Industry Update webinar on demand here.