GMO Internet’s Onamae.com launches domain protection service
The service aims to help website owners by preventing domain name hijacking.
Some of FinanceFeeds’ readers must have thought a lot about cyber security. Especially those who have experienced the nightmare of having their website taken down because of unauthorized access, being held hostage to malicious attacks that effectively hijack a domain name and make corporate email services useless.
Domain protection solutions are aimed at helping to prevent the above-mentioned situations. Today, Onamae.com, an ICANN-accredited domain registrar which is a part of GMO Internet Inc. (TYO:9449), is launching such a service for the administrators of websites it manages.
The logic of the solution is simple. The owner of the website gets to set additional protections to a range of parameters – any change concerning these parameters will require an approval by the owner. The parameters include domain management, server name management, “whois” information management, automated updates management, etc. This means that even if a third-party manages to log in, the attacker will not be able to make any changes to the website, as the changes will require an approval by the lawful administrator and/or owner.
The service also seeks to prevent non-voluntary errors that may damage a website. For instance, domain administrators often manage multiple domains with a single ID. As the number of domains to be managed increases, so does the likelihood of changing the setting of the wrong domain. The new domain protection service also helps avoid such a mishap.
The new service is launched as the cyber risks for businesses are on the rise. Some of GMO Internet’s businesses have suffered as a result of malicious attacks.
On January 7, 2018, GMO Pepabo Inc (TYO:3633) detected unauthorized access that abused the function of the original application. As a result, the company found out that shop owners’ and buyers’ information possibly leaked out. GMO Pepabo shut down the operations affected in order to stop the execution of the malicious program. According to the forensic investigation results made available to the company on January 25, 2018, credit card data that leaked covers more than 11,000 cases. Other information, such as date of birth, addresses, etc, also leaked – the maximum number of cases affected is 77,385.
