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The cybersecurity landscape in 2024 has been characterised by unprecedented complexity and rapidly evolving threats, presenting significant challenges for organisations across all sectors. As the digital attack surface expands and threat actors employ increasingly sophisticated techniques, domain security has emerged as a critical component of a robust cybersecurity strategy.
For any entity looking to launch a new company or other initiative, a primary requirement is often the selection of an appropriate brand name and the acquisition of a relevant associated domain name. In light of the increasing shortage of short, unregistered memorable names on popular domain name extensions (TLDs), many organisations are choosing to adopt novel or invented brand names and/or consider the use of alternative TLDs.
In CSC's recent insight paper, we address the trend that many business leaders today don't realize the extent to which their modern enterprise -- and its millions of digital assets -- rely on. It's a vast domain ecosystem that needs to be protected from online threats. Often, to better understand this need for domain security, we need to understand how critical and interconnected domains are within a business.
As with any high-stakes event, elections have become a prime target for cybercriminals seeking to exploit public trust through impersonation, misinformation, and scams. CSC's comprehensive research about the 2024 U.S. Election reveals the alarming role of dormant domains, which have the potential to be exploited for launching cyber attacks against political campaigns, organizations, and constituents.
In the final three articles in my series looking at algorithms for measuring the similarity of marks, I extend the ideas to provide a more sophisticated and adaptable framework. Article 4 introduces a similarity score based on color distance in RGB space, offering a quantitative approach to trademark similarity. Article 5 refines word mark similarity by using the International Phonetic Alphabet to improve phonetic analysis. The final article presents a method for sorting colors by dominant shade, aiding in trademark review and potential guidelines for color mark protection.
On October 10, all ISPs in the United States were supposed to have implemented and posted broadband labels. The labels were required as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Large ISPs had to post labels six months ago, and now the requirement is for all ISPs. I looked at the ISPs in a few counties I'm very familiar with, and I found a few ISPs in each county that have not posted labels that I can find on their website.
Expanding on a framework for quantifying word mark similarity by examining algorithms and proposing enhancements. This article assesses consistency with UK trademark case decisions and a search tool, explores subsequence analysis for similarity, and suggests using IPA phonetics to measure aural likeness. The objective framework could improve consistency in trademark assessments, despite the inherent subjectivity of legal tests.
In today's interconnected world, your business's online identity is increasingly more vulnerable than ever. With the rapid advancement of AI and 6G technologies, cyber threats are evolving at an alarming rate, making it critical to protect your brand's digital presence. How can businesses proactively safeguard their online identity in this changing landscape?
In my recent article on mark similarity measurement, I discussed a possible framework for protecting colour marks. The framework involves the specification of each colour according to its RGB (red-green-blue) specification (in which each component is expressed as an integer value between 0 and 255), with the suggestion that the protection afforded by a colour trademark could incorporate not only this exact colour, but also all similar colours around it up to a certain 'distance'...
Central to many intellectual property disputes is an assessment of the degree of similarity of two contested marks. A determination of similarity is fundamentally a subjective decision involving a range of relevant tests, which include consideration of the perception of the relevant consumer and recognition of the existence of degrees of similarity within a spectrum (from high to low).
In the fourth in this series of articles exploring how the application of appropriate tools, algorithms and analysis techniques can identify the existence of attractive, unregistered brandable domain names, I consider the prevalence of a few additional styles of name.
The previous two articles in this series have outlined techniques for 'mining' brandable domain names -- that is, domain names of potential interest to entities looking to launch a new brand name and associated website -- from the enormous dataset of unregistered names (determined via zone file analysis). The key element of the identification process is the implementation of filtering techniques to identify...
SpaceX first departed from its uniform Starlink pricing policy when it offered a reduced price for throttled service in France two years ago. Since then, many new, higher-capacity satellites have been launched, enabling SpaceX to reduce prices in low and middle-income countries like Kenya. Kenya had 405 geostationary satellite internet subscribers when Starlink became available in July 2023.
My previous article on brandable domain names1 -- that is, available (unregistered) domain names which may be appealing to any entity looking to identify a potential name for a new brand launch -- focused on the use of phonotactic (i.e. 'readability') analysis techniques to identify candidate names.
Conventional wisdom within the domain-sales industry states that the stock of unregistered domain names is 'running out,' with limited or no availability of short, desirable domain names across popular extensions (TLDs). This presents problems for would-be brand owners looking for a brand name (and accompanying suitable website presence) to utilize for newly-launched companies...
This year marks the fifth annual release of CSC's "Domain Security Report," which continues to shed light on the evolving landscape of domain security among Global 2000 companies. more
The journey towards widespread Cloud adoption has significantly impacted domain name system (DNS) management practices. Initially, businesses operated their own data centers, however the shift towards external hosting providers has introduced complexities and increased the potential for DNS record mismanagement, and therefore, subdomain vulnerability. more
Last month, Stephanie Driver, CSC's marketing manager, spoke with Global Director of Security Services Mark Flegg and discussed the Network and Information Security Directive (NIS2) 2022, which comes into force in October 2024. more
In recent news, more than 13,000 subdomains of brands were hijacked for a large spam campaign that "leverages the trust associated with these domains to circulate spam and malicious phishing emails by the millions each day, cunningly using their credibility and stolen resources to slip past security measures." more
This month, Stephanie Driver, CSC's marketing manager, spoke with Patrick Hauss, head of Corporate Development and Strategic Alliances EMEA, about the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Registration Data Request Service (RDRS) as part of an ongoing a series of interviews with CSC's Digital Brand services business experts, where we talk about industry issues across cybersecurity, domains, brand protection, and fraud protection. more
CSC, an enterprise-class domain registrar and world leader in mitigating domain security, domain name system (DNS), and digital brand threats, today announces its partnership with NetDiligence®, a leader in cyber risk readiness and response solutions for the cyber insurance industry. more
Many problem-solving processes say that to solve a problem, the first step is to accurately define it. The International Trademark Association (INTA) did just that earlier this year when they announced their board of directors adopted a resolution whereby they defined domain name system (DNS) abuse with the help of their constituents. more