Firms Have Fiduciary Responsibility to Lock Down Domain Names

A simple, cheap method to lock down domains exists. Public firm CTOs need to get on the ball.

CheckFree is warning 5 million clients regarding its domain name mishap last month where its nameservers were changed to forward its web site.

All the perpetrators did was get a password to CheckFree’s account at Network Solutions, log in, and change the nameservers to point to another server.

This same thing could happen to other firms, and public firm executives ought to be held liable by shareholders for not taking simple steps to prevent this. There are at least two easy solutions I’ve written regarding ahead of: Fabulous’ Executive Lock and Moniker’s Portfolio MaxLock. Fabulous’ service is free; Moniker’s costs a couple hundred bucks per year. That’s a modest price to pay to avoid notifying 5 million people that you screwed up.

Recent court decisions have found public firm board members responsible for protecting their intellectual property. It would seem that protecting domain names — especially mission critical ones like CheckFree.com, Dell.com, Amazon.com, and ATT.com, would fall under that realm.

So here’s a wake up call to public firm CEOs and CTOs: if your registrar won’t offer this added level of protection, it’s time to move your domain names.