New Zealand’s largest domain name and web hosting company, Umbrellar, has teamed up with Dot Kiwi, the New Zealand company approved by ICANN as the sole registry for the .kiwi top level domain, to help protect New Zealand businesses and individuals from potential phishing attacks and unwanted cyber-squatting.
Between them they say that more than 75,000 people and entities that own 200,000 domain names with Umbrellar will have the equivalent .kiwi domain put on hold for a year “while they decide if protecting .kiwi fits in with their overall domain name strategy.”
Umbrellar marketing manager, Brendan Wilde, said the deal would give its customers some breathing space, allowing them to decide whether or not they want to purchase the .kiwi domain.
Angus Richardson, managing director of Dot Kiwi, said: “Businesses aren’t going to own every iteration of their URL and email address, there are just too many options available. But they need to think about which ones resonate with their customers, and stakeholders. All it takes is for one scam email to be sent to your customers from a domain matching your brand, and the reputational damage could be substantial.”
Dot Kiwi has collated a report about cyber security in New Zealand, with advice on how to be protected online.
Meanwhile, the director of the Government Communications Security Bureau, Andrew Hampton, has been reported telling a Security Select Committee that his agency wants to give internet service providers more information and power to block cyber threats.
According to a report from Business Desk, the agency is looking to increase the information it gives to ISPs from Cortex, the system that aims to disrupt advanced cyber threats to organisations of national significance in both the public and the private sector.
“Where we're wanting to evolve Cortex is where we can provide more information to other parties such as ISPs so they can do some of the blocking on our behalf," Hampton was reported saying.
"An obvious benefit of that is it gets the security agency out of there which deals with any public concern about privacy, but also increases the ability to scale."