PINKY BRAND

iQ Domain Analytics Campaign Tracker saves time, headaches and resource costs for registry operators.

Are you using spreadsheets or other dashboard/spreadsheets on steroids services that require a lot of handholding because they are designed by folks that are not in the domain industry?

iQ Analytics is a SaaS Business Intelligence platform used by gTLD and ccTLD Registries. It has the ability to track Registry marketing campaigns and provide actionable insights into the performance of your Registrar campaigns.

Spend 4 minutes and take a look at the iQ Analytics Campaign Tracker and Dashboard. It’s specifically designed for the domain industry, by the domain industry.

iQ Abuse Manager – Not Just for Registries

This is an article originally posted on the iQ blog on September 9, 2020.

Subsequent to our last post announcing RegistryOffice becoming iQ, our new company name and the umbrella for all our products and services, we’d like to inform you that iQ Abuse Manager (formerly RegistryOffice Abuse Monitor) is now used by leading registrars and nearly 150 gTLDs and ccTLDs, and is also available to hosting service providers and brands.

Check out our just released 5 minute introductory video:

iQ Abuse Manageris our abuse management service where we offer access to curated abuse feeds from the world’s leading sources together with an API and management system, which makes handling domain name abuse cases efficient as possible. We also provide a fully managed service utilising this tool.

The applications for our service are quite broad. For example, If you are a brand owner with a portfolio of domain names, IQ Abuse Manager can alert you if any of those names have been reported in our abuse feeds.

If you are a registry operator contracted with ICANN, the iQ Abuse Manager will assist you in keeping your namespace clean and in compliance with ICANN Spec 11.3.b.

If you are a registrar, you can for example, integrate our API with your existing CRM/ticketing system to proactively detect and manage reported abuse cases. With this tool a registrar can work in concert with various parties in reducing abuse levels.

Whether you are a registry, registrar or hosting service, iQ Abuse Manager will help you improve your abuse workflow, reduce associated costs, mitigate false positives and help to protect your own brand and reputation. It also helps to build a safer Internet!

We’re currently offering a free no-obligation trial. Contact us at sales@iq.global to get started.

RegistryOffice becomes iQ

Introducing you to iQ, our new company name and the umbrella for all our products and services! Our ownership, people and services remain the same.

This is an article originally posted on the iQ blog on August 25, 2020.

RegistryOffice and Abuse Monitor are two services that were born out of a need when our company was the operator of the .global top-level domain.

Both services have since grown substantially, and last year we chose to let .global go in order to focus on our core services instead. Since then, the company name RegistryOffice has served us well, and many in the domain name industry recognise the company name and the people who work with us.

However, we have reached a point where the name no longer reflects what we do. Our customers are no longer limited to registries but also include registrars, resellers, backend providers, brand owners, and domain investors to name a few.

After much internal discussion and customer feedback, we have started the journey towards rebranding RegistryOffice and our services to be a better fit going forward.

We would like to introduce you to iQ, our new company name and the umbrella for all our products and services! While our name is changing, our ownership, people and services remain the same.

Our new iQ brand stands for Intelligence and Quality in everything we do.

This journey has only just begun, and the new name and website, https://iq.global is just the first step.

Our services now have updated names and logos. More details about them will appear soon on our new website. For example:

iQ Domain Analytics (formerly RegistryOffice Business Intelligence) is our Business Intelligence product for top-level domain name registries.

iQ Abuse Manager (formerly RegistryOffice Abuse Monitor) is our abuse management service where we offer access to curated abuse feeds from the world’s leading sources together with an API and management system, which makes handling abuse cases efficient as possible. We also provide a fully managed service utilising this tool.

iQ Broker is our super premium domain brokerage service. Our experts have trusted global knowledge and direct experience to assist in selling, acquiring and appraising super premium names. Our first listing, amen.com, is currently available for offers.

iQ Consulting offers our senior staff as consultants to the domain name industry. With over a hundred years of accumulated experience in the domain name business and significant skill in managed abuse, top-level domain name policy making, operations, premium name strategy and system development, we can offer something that not many others can.

iQ DevOps is where your ideas of a new portal, site, or service can go from vision to completion, developed by us, and operated in the cloud. The service includes access to project managers, visual, system and database designers, full-stack development teams, and high-availability operations experts.

Again, while our name is changing, our ownership, people and services remain the same. We are committed to providing the best possible experience for our existing customers and look forward to welcoming new customers to iQ.

If you would like more information about this change or our services, please contact anyone in our team directly, or at hello@iq.global. Also be sure to follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/iqglobalas or LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/iqglobal

RegistryOffice adds more COVID-19 scam domain report feeds to Abuse Monitor.

This is an article that I originally posted on our RegistryOffice.blog site on April 1st.

We’ve added more suspected COVID-19 pandemic related domain scam report source feeds and ~~will shortly~~ now include human verified blacklist feeds to production in our Abuse Monitor. This will help registry operators, registrars and hosters to save resources and effort managing the flood of COVID-19 domain abuse reports.

We will provide these feeds, as well as our existing reputation feeds, via Abuse Monitor at no charge or obligation for 60 days to any registry operator (gTLD or ccTLD), registrar or hosting providers that desire to access. Included in the service is our tool to manage identified domain abuse cases either through a web interface, or use our API. Contact us to get going.

We initially integrated a list provided by Malware Patrol and have since added CheckPhish.ai and a continuously updated blacklist provided by the COVID-19 Cyber Threat Coalition (@ThreatCoalition) that we have joined and endorsed. This is a remarkable global volunteer coalition of cybersecurity experts publishing data sets with indicators believed to be used by criminals trying to prey on individuals, organizations, businesses and governments using the COVID-19 pandemic.

The additional feeds, as well as our existing reputation feeds, will help users determine if the multiple feeds that we have curated are reporting suspected abuse for the same domain name. Below is an example screenshot where three different sources are reporting for the same domain name:

We are working hard on combining all available intelligence and endeavour to compare what is received against vetted whitelists in order to assist in reducing false positives. As development cycles can vary widely among registry operators, registrars and hosters, getting access to this tool now (and at no charge) can assist in mitigating this particular abuse threat and free up internal dev people for other priorities.

We are using the same abuse monitoring workflow logic that already applies to our tool for monitoring and managing domain abuse as defined by ICANN spec 11.3.b. Ultimately it is up to the registry operator or registrar to investigate each report of abuse and then manage each case according to their own policies and protocol, or they can be managed by RegistryOffice if using our managed services.

The ICANN Registry Agreement Spec 11.3B is related to DNS abuse. The COVID-19 feeds are more focused on content on a website.

Some of our COVID-19 feeds identify a domain name as suspicious based on keywords (“corona” “covid19” or other related keywords). This does not necessarily mean that the domain is being used for nefarious purposes. Some new registrations may be legitimate or point to parking pages. However, our testing has found that many are being used for malicious purposes such as leading to malware and phishing activity, which by our interpretation constitutes domain name abuse as defined by spec 11.3.b.

We ~~will shortly~~ now include vetted COVID-19 feeds. A vetted feed is investigated by humans, hence should be more accurate and with lower false positives.

Compared with “legacy” Reputation Block Lists (Spamhaus, SURBL etc), we ask you to understand that the COVID-19 feeds are developed rapidly and in a more “ad-hoc” design. Our objective to add the COVID-19 feeds is to take part in the fight against false information, scams and phishing. We cannot let the pandemic be a playground for the bad guys.

We believe our subscribers will benefit from having this information and determine how best to act to protect their interests, and ultimately the public. We invite any registry operator (gTLD or ccTLD), registrar or hosting provider that has not yet subscribed to our domain Abuse Monitor to leverage our tools and the COVID-19 scam intelligence at no charge and no obligation for 60 days. Contact us to get going.

Updated 2 April 2020 by Pinky Brand

Posted 1 April 2020 by Pinky Brand

RegistryOffice supports the “Framework to Address Abuse”

An article that I originally posted on our RegistryOffice.blog site on January 14th.

Defining and fighting DNS abuse has been getting attention within the domain name industry in recent years, and was especially a major topic of conversation and debate in 2019.

Last October, the Framework to Address Abuse was published by eleven original signatories and now has 48 signatory registrars and registries. RegistryOffice supports the Framework as it provides a common definition of certain types of DNS abuse and states that registries and registrars must act upon the defined categories. It also addresses important related matters such as:

Website Content Abuse
Disproportionality and Collateral Damage
When Should a Registrar or Registry Act on Website Content Abuse?
Proper Referral Procedures for Website Content Abuse
What “Taking Action” Looks Like
ICANN’s Role

The Framework also talks about the “The Role of Trusted Notifiers.” Through our Abuse Monitor service for registries and registrars, RegistryOffice acts as a Trusted Notifier and subject matter expert in providing a cost-effective and trusted SaaS platform to assist with DNS abuse notification, management and reporting.

From 2020 and beyond, we believe that registry operators, registrars and hosters will continue to face increasing and new types of security threats. It is important that all entities establish a way to monitor their namespace for security threats.

It is also important for all concerned to work together in order to coordinate identification, verification, and management of such threats and reduce false positive reporting. This is not only to negate the possibility of new policies and regulations being imposed by regulatory authorities and government, but also to protect the general public, partners, and the reputations of registries, registrars and the industry as a whole.

Let’s work together to build a safer Internet.

We invite you to participate in the conversation about abuse! You can learn more in a few short weeks at NamesCon 2020 in Austin during the following sessions:

Fighting DNS Abuse at Scale – Wednesday January 29, 2:00 PM – 2:30 PM

DNS Abuse: Threats and Responses – Friday January 31, 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM

View our short 4 1/2 minute video introduction of Abuse Monitor:

Download our “Fighting DNS Abuse at Scale” paper – It explains how the RegistryOffice Abuse Monitor helps its clients to efficiently manage their abuse workflow, protect the reputation of their zone(s) and build a safer Internet.

Posted 7 February 2020

I’m joining the RegistryOffice team

I’m thrilled to announce that I have joined the RegistryOffice team full time as Senior VP Marketing & Sales.

RegistryOffice business intelligence joins data from multiple sources and uses machine learning together with AI to improve insight in order to find patterns and trends that would otherwise be hard for domain name registries to discover manually.

In addition to spreading the good word about our Business Intelligence and Abuse Monitoring services, I’ll be working with my colleagues to expand the range of our consulting services. Also I am bringing over my registry operator clients who will benefit from additional expertise and resources.

This wasn’t a snap decision. However it was an easy one in view of my long-time relationship with the founders, the entire team and the services. In the early days of RegistryOffice I evaluated a beta version of the Business Intelligence service for a registry operator client and instantly recognized its benefits. With great clients, their valuable feedback + a killer team of respected industry veterans on the RegistryOffice side, the service just keeps on getting better and better.

There is so much more to come and plenty of opportunities in this space. You can keep up with what’s going on at our new blog at RegistryOffice.blog. Go ahead and subscribe so you don’t miss a post. 🙂

I’ll be in Vegas for NamesCon Global at the end of January, so hit me up if you’d like to meet or get a demo.

We will also be presenting two RegistryOffice sponsored sessions at NamesCon:

Sunday 11am – Building a Safer Internet While Fighting Abuse At Scale
Tuesday 10am – Data rules. How domain industry leaders use it to their advantage.

I hope to see some of you there!

Peace,
Pinky

New Premium Names Manager from RegistryOffice

Looking towards ICANN 63 in Barcelona, I thought I’d share brand new features rolling out to RegistryOffice and the AbuseMonitor that will make it easier than ever for you to track, take action and have efficient tools to manage and grow your TLD or ccTLD. Yes RegistryOffice works with ccTLDs and ccTLD customers have been added this year.

Premium name sales are proving to be a trending key revenue driver for some operators. Thus a new Premium Manager module has been added to RegistryOffice in response to registry operators who are wanting to get a better handle on tracking their EPP vs direct sales, tracking registrar or agent commissions—and for example, if the sale occurred during a registrar promotion or auction.

RegistryOffice is designed and flexible to work with various backend providers. If another customer is already integrated with the same backend as you then it is easy to get an evaluation version so you can get an idea of this will improve your insight and growth.

Trying to get a handle on your premium name inventory and understanding ROI and renewals attributed to multiple registrar campaigns? Maybe we should talk?

.HOMES is launching as an unrestricted TLD

.HOMES is launching as an unrestricted TLD on January 14th, 2019.

Dominion Registries, which operates .HOMES, will be removing the current restrictive eligibility requirements. Anyone will then be able to register or acquire available General Availability (GA) or premium names starting 14 January.

Think names such as vacation.homes, tiny.homes, foreclosed.homes, LongIsland.homes, BayArea.homes, Houston.homes, Chicago.homes, YourCompanyName.homes and so on.

Pricing for standard GA .HOMES names is going to be significantly lower than it is now, and the lower pricing will be effective on 14 January as well. Most premium names will be offered in 7 price tiers via EPP and renewals will be at standard prices. Afilias is the backend RSP.

Real estate is a $1.5 trillion dollar industry in the U.S. alone, and over half the country will be looking for a new home over the next five years. There are 1.4 million monthly searches for keywords relating to homes for sale. Names containing “homes” are registered in .com at a rate of ~250/day ~91,500/yr pace. Sources: National Association of Realtors, Verisign DomainScope

This will be a great opportunity for registrars to acquire or upsell business customers and naming investors with interests in the housing and real estate verticals. Proxy registrations will be allowed starting on 14 January.

Dominion Registries is a relatively new client. Their parent, Dominion Enterprises, own and operate widely recognized B2C web and mobile portals, including ForRent.com, Homes.com and CycleTrader.com, that generate nearly 30 million unique visits monthly. They have 3,000 employees in their Norfolk, Va. home office, across the U.S., and internationally.

They also own and operate .AUTOS, .BOATS, .YACHTS and .MOTORCYCLES. All were originally launched as restricted TLDs.

.BOATS eligibility requirements have already been removed with pricing to be reduced on 15 October.

.YACHTS eligibility requirements will be removed on 15 October and prices will be reduced. .MOTORCYCLES will follow on 1 November with equally lower pricing.

.AUTOS remains restricted for now. I’m expecting that will change at some point in Q1 2019 with lower pricing as well.

Please go here to request a review copy of the .homes RRA or simply contact me to learn more or set up a call.

ccTLD accreditation in China

I’m pleased to announce that my client, Beijing InfiniTLD Ltd, along with ZDNS, has successfully assisted Neustar (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. in obtaining their China Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) accreditation to operate the .CO country-code top level domain (ccTLD) in China for five years. This is notable in that .CO is the first foreign ccTLD approved by MIIT among dozens of other new gTLDs approved since 2014.

The .CO ccTLD, corresponding to the ISO 3166 Alpha-2 code for the nation of Colombia, is operated by .CO Internet S.A.S. in Bogota, Colombia and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of privately held Neustar, Inc., headquartered in Sterling, Virginia.

For the purposes of .CO’s accreditation in China, InfiniTLD assisted with application services, including key stages and procedures, and ZDNS addressed technical matters and requirements.

Beyond, .com, .cn and Chinese IDNs, ccTLDs are favored by some Chinese because they are short (always two letters) and easy to remember.

If you are an operator of a ccTLD (or a new gTLD) and are interested in the China market, feel free to contact me to learn more about how you can work with InfiniTLD to get your registry operation set up and legal in China. This includes support to establish domestic entities (WFOE) in China, channel expansion, sales management, marketing and products optimization, etc.

Does your government directly manage and operate your ccTLD and thus establishing a domestic entity in China is not an option? Not a problem. I’ve got a solution to address that. 🙂

Timing and relationships are everything in China! Act quickly and with the right people, otherwise you may spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to enter the Chinese market.

Demo Video: Domain Abuse Monitor

Are you a TLD registry operator looking for an affordable and intuitive ICANN Spec 11.3.b compliant abuse monitoring and case management platform?

Take 9 minutes and watch my June 2018 update demo of the RegistryOffice Abuse Monitor.

Abuse Monitor consists of two major components:

Abuse Detection. The service must be able to detect threats as they occur and immediately notify you with few or non false positives.
Case Management. When you are notified about malicious activity, how do you make sure you handled it professionally? How do you make sure you don’t forget to follow up a case and keep track of the actions taken? You need a proper CRM or Case Management System for your abuse cases.

It’s built from the bottom up to be as cost efficient as possible, but at the same time provide ICANN Compliance.

The Basic version was developed for .brands and smaller registries that have little to no abuse. The Standard version is best suited for open registries that actively want to combat any and all malicious activities in their zone.

The professionally managed option (available for either version) has been selected by some registry operators. It’s great if you don’t have much experience in handling abuse. It’s also great even if you have staff that can handle follow-up, but would rather have them focus on stuff like sales, marketing, operations, etc. instead of dealing with abusive registrants and filing reports to ICANN.

Please contact me for an in-depth demo and discussion.