Not renewing your domain name, can happen to anyone - even Google. In recent news, Google’s web presence in Argentina, Google.com.ar was bought by a Nicolas Kurona, aged 30, for the equivalent of £2.00.
Google.com.ar is a domain name which went offline on Monday 26th April 2021, at which point Nicolas Kurona logged on to the Argentinian Domain Registry website (nic.ar) to check what had happened.
He typed in the domain and could immediately see it was available to purchase at the shockingly low price of only 270 pesos (£2.00/$2.89), and so he quickly purchased the domain. He was now the new proud owner of Google.com.ar. “I never imagined that it was going to allow me to buy it,” Kurona told the BBC. Nicolas has made it clear that he had no bad intentions, he just wanted to see if he could purchase the domain and so he did.
One theory is that Google had forgotten to renew its domain name. However, Google says its license was not due to expire until July 2021. Google has since regained control and it’s still unclear as to how Nicolas Kurona was able to purchase it. Google has launched an investigation to establish the exact cause.
In the past year, there have been countless cyber-attacks and data breaches, where the organisations involved either did not know, or reveal the extent of the damage caused.
Around 20,995,371 records were breached in March 2020, with 151 recorded incidents. 82 recorded breaches in January 2020 and 118 in February 2020. With the pandemic and working from home still being enforced those stats are only going to continue to rise. The average cost of a data breach was $3.86 million as of 2020 (IBM), this highlights just how important it is to protect your data.
With the increase of online users, companies must continue to be proactive with the approach to cyber security. If you wish to avoid significant loss of revenue, customer trust and/or punitive fines now associated with breaches of GDPR, putting simple processes in place like domain registry locks, longer registration terms and ensuring that your domains auto-renew will give at least some measure of comfort to business owners.
It can be difficult to know where to begin when it comes to protecting your business from cybercrime and cyberattacks. However, Safenames has the solution to the ever-increasing problem, as one of the leading Corporate Domain Name Registrars, with a wrap-around managed service of Brand Protection, Bot Management, Web Application Firewalls, Enterprise Hosting, DDoS Mitigation, SSL Management, Premium DNS and Content Delivery Networks, we can protect your company from cyber-attacks and online brand infringements.
Don’t let your company be the next to fall victim to these cybercrimes, protect your organisation and your customers from these constant threats.
Contact Channing Reid at Safenames today to discuss how we can help you.
Email: channing.reid@safenames.net
Tel: 01908 200022 ext. 795
Sources -
https://www.varonis.com/blog/cybersecurity-statistics/
https://www.itgovernance.co.uk/blog/list-of-data-breaches-and-cyber-attacks-in-march-2021
https://www.safenames.net/resources/about-safenames
Channing Reid
Business Development Executive
We can customise a solution to fit your business needs.
+44 (0) 1908 200022
+1 703 574 5313