Register an account with Nominet
Your domain name is a critically important part of your online services and your business identity. Your domain name is how customers find and trust you online. It is the jigsaw piece that has to work every time someone needs to see your website or send you an email. So, your domain name is strategically vital to your visibility and daily operations.
Click on the headers below to learn how to use a Nominet account to tighten control of your .uk domain names. Or, skip the sermon, and access Nominet Online Services here.
Contact us for help.
Compliance
UK businesses like yours are responsible for protecting personal data under statutory GDPR provisions. If your domain name is registered through a third party (like a web designer or IT supplier), and you do not have direct access to your domain name’s control panel, you do not know that your registration details are accurate. When you bought a domain name, were you even thinking about legal title? This can lead to compliance issues.
Ownership versus administrative control
There are good reasons why owners do not have daily access to your domain name. Domain names are like phone books which direct traffic to the services you need to operate. For instance, email might operate from Microsoft 365, and your web site operates from a server based at Canary Wharf, London. Your domain name controls this, and inadvertant edits to your records could catastrophically disrupt your services. Even a missing period or full stop could take your IT services down. So, unless you are expert in one of IT’s trickiest technologies – DNS – you need to rely on someone who is.
Most owners give administrative custody to consultants at Registrar level, but do not secure their overriding rights at Nominet. This is a critical risk.
So, you still need someone you trust to operate your domain name as if they are owners. That entity is called the administrative contact. Usually, though, businesses just give their IT support the ownership credentials. That is OK if you trust your IT supplier like you might trust your lawyer. Even so, you need a back door so that you have a trump card to change admin or transfer the domain name to another registrar. It is not really a matter of trust. An IT supplier might fail. A malicious hacker might gain access to your domain name with the intention of holding you to ransom.
Nominet provides independant access to owners
Nominet is the not-for profit organistation which governs the operation of .uk domain names – about 10 million domain names at time of writing. You can buy directly through Nominet, however the organization prefers to delegate daily conduct of new registrations, transfers and renewals to registrars like GoDaddy, TuCows, Enom, OpenSRS, Joker.com and many more. You probably have not heard much about Nominet and that is probably a tribute to its well regarded operations worldwide.
You probably had an email from Nominet when you bought your domain name asking you for some information. In most cases, we find that this email is ignored. Partly, this is because you might not know who Nominet is. Partly, because the domain name bears such an insignificant cost, the effort to seal loopholes seems pointless.
Protect Your IT assets
Take advantage of ownership privileges
Registering an account at Nominet helps you clarify legal title and other information that was not properly recorded at point-of-sale. For instance, Nominet might list you as owner because you had to use your name and address to get a credit card to work. However, the domain name should really be the property of a limited company. Owner information is legally binding, so seemingly small details which can cause problematic and costly issues at law in future.
Also, although you have to delegate daily management of your domain names to an IT expert (unless you have a professional IT department), you can still exercise control as owner. If you do have this kind of control, then your IT experts can pass custody of your domain name to other registrars who might provide better tools for features that you need. Or, if someone hacks your registrar account and hijacks your domain name, you can resort to Nominet to recover control.
This security is overlooked to a worrying degree. Even organizations that puport to be fastidious about IT policy and GDPR rarely act to secure one IT asset which can cause catastrophic damage to online services.
Nominet Online Services
Nominet has a facility for that protects your global ownership for .uk domain names – Nominet Online Services.
Nominet’s online portal allows you to associate domain names that you own with your Nominet account which provides a haven of last resort in situations where a supplier fails, or a malicious entity attempts to hijack ownership of the domain, or other force majeur problems. By associating your domain name with your own Nominet account, you can manage your data directly and ensure its handled in line with GDPR requirements. Really, GDPR is not about penal legislation. Rather, GDPR is a framework to help you document what is common sense in the first place.
This kind of control is essential for business continuity and peace of mind. Access Nominet Online Services here.
Link Your Domain to Your Nominet Account
Take Action
If you own a .UK domain name, you can associate it with your Nominet account. This gives you full control over your domain and ensures you’re protected. Access Nominet Online Services here. This service only operates for .uk domain names, so you could not include a .com domain name in your Nominet protfolio. .com and other domains use other tools to “harden” ownership, and we can give you advice about this if you need to follow this up.
About ComStat.uk: Internet Service Provider Comstat provides IT support, web hosting, and media services including web design, Microsoft 365 setup, and audio/video production, serving businesses across Denbighshire, North Wales and Wirral from Ruthin, and Lancashire and the Northwest from Bolton.
