CSC Domain Security Note finds growth in DMARC and registry lock adoption

Note shows growth in DMARC, but slow adoption of other security measures.

Corporate domain name registrar CSC has published its 2026 Domain Security Note, which evaluates the domain security hygiene of Global 2000 firms.

The registrar and brand management firm evaluated the 2000 firms for their use of DMARC, DNS redundancy, registry locks, CAA records, and DNSSEC.

The fastest-growing area of adoption over the past five years is DMARC, which 80% of firms use, up from 39% in 2020. CSC believes some of the recent uptick in adoption is due to the European Union’s Network and Information Security Directive 2 (NIS2).

Registry Lock usage has increased to 24%. CSC observed that firms that use “enterprise-class” registrars, such as CSC, are more likely to adopt Registry Lock; many consumer-focused registrars don’t offer it.

Regionally, APAC saw the largest growth in domain security adoption over the past year, but it still lags behind EMEA and the Americas.

CSC also evaluated domain security practices at unicorns compared to the Global 2000. It found that unicorns had better domain security practices than many Global 2000 firms, especially when it comes to email. Unicorns lag in registry lock, perhaps since many of these startups use consumer-focused registrars.