New Domain Name Changes: Act Now To Protect Your Business Brand
B.Duncan, 2022
Website domain names have now become the hub of every online organisation’s brand identity. From March 24th of this year, anyone with a local Australian connection (businesses included) can now register a new domain name category. This shorter domain name will end in just .AU as opposed to .com.au, .gov.au and so forth.
Important Details
Australian businesses have prioritised access to reserve their new domain name equivalent until the 20th of September. Beyond that date, all new domains will be accessible to the general public. This means you are risking the chance of having anyone registering a .au domain, creating brand confusion for your business, potentially risking online identity theft and your existing SEO marketing performance.
These days, we all need to be protecting our digital information. Don’t risk your organisation’s online security by allowing criminals to easily impersonate your website. Your domain name is an essential part of your online brand identity, so if someone with malicious intent were to register your new .au domain before you they’d have a good chance at convincing your customers their website is authentic and affiliated with your company. A simple demonstration of this would be if you currently own the domain yourbusinessname.com.au and someone outside of your company registers the domain yourbusinessname.au.
If a customer came across the imposter website, given the similarity in the domain they may assume it’s actually an authentic website connected to your business. The risk of customers engaging with imposter websites has the potential to ruin your entire business, both online and offline. It’s likely cybercriminals will be ready to poach new domain name equivalents of successful businesses come September 20th, so registering your .au domain should be done as soon as possible.
Act Now To Protect Your Business Brand
To protect your business from cybercrime and secure your new domain name equivalent, the Australian Cyber Security Centre advises all Australian businesses to register their .au domain applications before the 20th of September, 2022.
As mentioned previously, if you fail to register before the deadline, your new domain name equivalent becomes accessible to the general public for registration. The risk of missing the deadline and losing your priority access to register your new name domain isn't worth it.
So with less than two weeks before the deadline, if you already own the .com.au or .net.au variant of your domain name, the Click Creative digital agency Melbourne team can assist you with your application to secure the .au variant up until 19th September 2022, after which the .au domains will be freely available. Find out more about our Managed Web Services, including secure Hosting and expert Support for your website and email requirements.
