Between the Dots

5 Simple Ways to Help Customers Find Your Small Business Online

2013-05-16T18:35:11-04:00

The key for any business to be found online is to establish an online presence with a website. But that’s not all it takes. Many well-meaning businesses operate on an “if you build it they will come” philosophy when it comes to their website, but it takes much more than a snazzy website to get customers interested in your business. Luckily, there are a few simple techniques that can help your website rise to the top of search rankings and give your small business a significant competitive advantage if done properly. Below are five of the most important ways to help customers find your small business. If you don't yet have a website, the first step to getting one is to search for and register a domain name. We've made it easy for you on our website here.

1. Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is one of the most important things you can do to help increase traffic to your website. SEO is the practice of strategically using keywords in your website content to help make sure your website can be found by people trying searching for things through Google, Bing and other search engines. Keywords are the descriptions, words and phrases people type into search engines to find what they are looking for. It is important for your site to include the right keywords and phrases so search engines can identify your site as a destination for people interested in what your brand is about. For example, if you own a pizza shop in Boise, ID, it would be wise to include phrases such as “best pizza in Boise” on your home page as that is a commonly searched for phrase by Boise locals who want to know where to get the best pizza. It is also important, however, that these keywords not be overused or underused. It may sound complex, but implementing even a basic SEO program can greatly increase your chances of finding new customers online.

2. Mobile Optimization

According to a recent survey conducted by SearchEngineLand.com, 85% of consumers used the Internet to find local businesses in the past 12 months and one in six consumers use the Internet every week to find local businesses. The proliferation of smartphones and tablets in the consumer marketplace has made mobile search one of the fastest growing ways people find small businesses like yours. Mobile traffic among consumers is exploding and folks aren’t just using their phones to search, but also to make purchases.

According to Forrester Research, by 2016, mobile commerce will reach $31 billion. If your website isn’t already mobile-friendly, meaning easy to use and navigate by mobile users, you may be missing out on business and losing customers and sales. Another thing to consider is that mobile search, because it is routed through telephone company networks, weighs local results more heavily, making mobile search the 21st century replacement for the old Yellow Pages.

3. Social Media

Your website is the center of your online presence and social media provides a powerful avenue to drive traffic to your site. Blending social networking with traditional marketing channels, like your website, is one of the best ways for a small business to connect with new customers and strengthen relationships with existing customers.

When getting involved in social media, it is important to remember that not every business is the same - there’s no one size fits all approach here – so you’ll want to spend some time looking at which social networks make the most sense for your business. A good place to start is to look at what your competition may or may not be doing. For example, Pinterest can be great for driving traffic to single product pages while Facebook is better suited for engaging your customers and building a culture around your brand.

No matter which channel you choose, the key to driving small businesses success with social media is to post relevant information – i.e., coupons, sales, specials, news, etc. - regularly, and respond to and engage with followers who take the time to visit your social channels.

4. Local Review Sites

Most small businesses are missing a huge opportunity by not setting up profiles on local review sites. These days, your customers often turn to the Internet first to research local products and services, and many are landing on local review sites like Yelp, Yahoo! Local Listings and Google Places first, making them very influential. While customers do care what you have to say about your business, they care even more about what other folks like them have to say about their experiences with your business. The good news is that those who have had great experiences with you will trumpet your praises to the heavens. The bad news is that those who have dissatisfactory experiences will too. This is the new word-of-mouth.

While you can’t please everyone, an abundance of positive ratings on local listing sites is a huge competitive advantage for local small businesses. It may seem like a daunting task to get your customers to sing your praises, but it is actually really simple: Just ask them. You know who your best customers are. Next time they visit your business, simply ask them to write a review. You can also post a link to your local review site on all of your social media accounts and ask your followers to write a review. The efforts you put into this activity will pay you back in droves.

5. Contact Info/Business Hours

While it may seem obvious, there are countless businesses that either forget to include this essential information on their websites altogether, or relegate it to a buried “contact us” page. If you spend time on all of the tips above and don’t make where and when you are open for business obvious for customers, you stand to lose their interest as soon as they land on your website.

Every single page of your website should feature your contact information - your address, phone number and email address (fax, too if you still use it). This information should reside somewhere in the upper half of your website, whether it’s in your website’s header or sidebar. Yes, you can have a special contact page with a built-in e-mail/comment box to make sending you a message easier, but put that important first contact info on every page, too.

Some businesses’ don’t run 9 to 5, or even on a clock, but if your business has specific hours of operation, make sure that information is also easy to find. For any retail store, letting your customers know what hours you open and close will keep you from losing sales because they assumed you were open when you weren’t. It also helps to prevent phone calls from curious customers so you and your employees can focus on your core business.

What are some other things you have done to help customers find your small business? Do you have any personal experiences with the above techniques to share?

Part 1 of 5: Introduction: New gTLD Security and Stability Considerations

2013-05-09T11:00:03-04:00

Verisign recently published a technical report on new generic top-level domain (gTLD) security and stability considerations. The initial objective of the report was to assess for Verisign’s senior management our own operational preparedness for new gTLDs, as both a Registry Service Provider for approximately 200 strings, as well as a direct applicant for 14 new gTLDs (including 12 internationalized domain name (IDN) transliterations of .com and .net). The goal was to help ensure our teams, infrastructure and processes are prepared for the pilot and general pre-delegation testing (PDT) exercises, various bits of which are underway, and the subsequent production delegations and launch of new gTLDs shortly thereafter.

However, in cataloging internal and external risks related to the new gTLD program, we found several far-reaching and long-standing issues that need to be further explored and/or resolved with varying levels of urgency. We felt it necessary to shine a more public light on these issues in order to raise awareness of the effects that could be felt throughout the Internet if proper caution is not exercised in the implementation of new gTLDs.

A Little Background:

In addition to being a direct applicant stakeholder and Registry Service Provider in the new gTLD program, Verisign has long been deeply engaged in various aspects of the Domain Name System (DNS) and broader Internet infrastructure ecosystem. For example, Verisign:

Operates two of the Internet’s 13 root name servers (letters A & J),
Runs the TLD registry services for .com, .net, .gov, and several other TLDs (accounting for more than120 million registered domain names),
Works with ICANN and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s NTIA to perform the root zone management function itself,
Has provided more than 15 years of uninterrupted network availability for .com and .net,
Is a public company and maintains hundreds of controls across 8 regulatory compliance frameworks that are periodically audited or continuously monitored by third parties,
Has a worldwide network footprint and backbone with approximately 70 data center or regional services locations globally, and
Provides Managed DNS, DDoS Protection Services and Cyber threat intelligence services (e.g., iDefense) to a global customer base that includes a number of Fortune 500 companies.

Verisign’s expertise and distinct view into the Internet ecosystem enables us to highlight issues that could prove to have significant consequences. In developing the New gTLD Security and Stability Considerations report, we sought to not only understand our own preparedness, but also that of the broader DNS ecosystem, and of the billions of Internet users ultimately dependent on that system. Somewhat ironically in hindsight, it was comments from ICANN leadership in late January 2013, and collaborative work within ICANN’s Registry Stakeholders (RySG) Group in February and March to examine concerns about operational preparedness that led Verisign to publicly issue a report in part to help draw due attention and foster more rapid consideration and resolution of these issues, given that ICANN was purportedly months and hours away from launch.

While the New gTLD Security and Stability Considerations report is by no means comprehensive, it provides a clear illustration of the many existing issues and known risks that have been highlighted in various documents, and public, for several years – many of which came from ICANN’s very own Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) – that still need to be addressed or explored further (e.g., namespace collisions issues and administrative boundaries in the DNS), and should be completed before new gTLDs are delegated.

In an effort to make the information within the report more digestible to a broad audience, I will publish several blog posts over the next few weeks that will explore some of these outstanding (or resolved) issues. The general objective is to share, in as simple a manner as possible, my perspective on often complex and nuanced Internet infrastructure security and stability issues related to the DNS and new gTLDs in particular. My aim is to simply increase awareness of the issues, risks, and resolutions that face applicants, registry operators and registrars, application developers and OS vendors, security folk, enterprises, and consumers alike.

New gTLD Security and Stability Considerations Blog Series:

Introduction: New gTLD Security & Stability Considerations
Stability at the Core, Innovation at the Edges
Internal Names Certificates, SAC057, CA/B Forum and revocation in X.509
NXDOMAINs, SAC045, PayPal letter
Administrative Boundaries in the DNS

(Information available on, or accessible through, websites mentioned in this blog [above] are not incorporated herein by reference.)

Big Data Can Pose Big Challenges, and Opportunities, for Organizations

2013-05-02T11:13:15-04:00

Of all the societal transformations wrought by the Internet revolution, perhaps the most significant has been the rapid but permanent shift from an environment defined by information scarcity, to one defined by information overload. The era of “Big Data” is here, and an element of success will be an organization’s ability to navigate and make use of its data. According to recent research, the global Big Data market was worth USD $6.3 billion in 2012 and is expected to reach USD $48.3 billion by 2018, at a compound annual growth rate of 40.5 percent from 2012 to 2018.

Big Data’s exact definition depends a great deal on who is defining it. At its core, the term “Big Data” refers to a phenomenon that should be instantly familiar to organizations of all sizes: The ability to collect and store highly relevant, mission-critical data is far outpacing the ability to effectively process, analyze and leverage it to make informed business decisions.

Twenty years ago success in business, as often as not, was determined by who could gather the best and most relevant data (about competitors, customers, emerging markets, etc.) in the timeliest fashion. Because analyzing that data was comparatively simple, and a relatively homogenous process from one organization to another, competitive differentiation came from who could find the best data first.

The Internet changed that paradigm in three critical ways: First, it globally democratized access to data, enabling many more players to gather similar relevant data; second, it exponentially increased the amount of relevant data that is generated, and could be collected and stored; third, there are now tools and technologies that make it easier to analyze large amounts of unstructured data. We believe success is now determined less by who can find the best data, but who can make the best sense of the massive amounts of data available.

In many ways, the term “Big Data” may be the biggest understatement in the history of business. The amount of information described by that term is staggering. IBM estimates that human beings now generate more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day, and that 90 percent of the world’s total data has been generated in the past two years. The archive of the Library of Congress currently consists of 285 terabytes of data, and is growing at a rate of five terabytes per month (or about 60 terabytes a year).

Obviously the percentage of this massive, rapidly expanding global data store that is relevant to any individual business at any given time may be comparatively tiny. But that is precisely the point: We believe developing the capacity to quickly identify and act on relevant information is the most pressing need for companies in the Big Data Age.

Fortunately, the business challenges posed by Big Data have spurred the creation of an impressive range of technological solutions. Some of the world’s most innovative companies have turned their efforts toward creating open source tools that allow organizations to analyze and process the data that is critical to their markets and their customers. Sorting through these options can be a data challenge in itself, but information professionals now have access to the tools they need to navigate the Big Data landscape.

Big Data in the Domain Name Space

Big Data is nothing new for anyone involved in the domain name industry. With more than 252 million registered domain names generating billions of Web pages, the DNS itself presents its own unique Big Data challenge, but also offers distinctive opportunities.

Today, companies can insert intelligence into their DNS servers in order to analyze the abundance of data that may flow into their systems. By analyzing DNS transactions, companies can glean greater insight into precisely how domain names are being used, including their functionality, connectivity and reach, or what information users leverage the most. Such intelligence can help companies make more informed decisions regarding their future business strategy or offer better services that meet their customers’ needs. And given that nearly every Internet transaction goes through DNS servers, that data source can become a true business differentiator, when analyzed correctly.

In addition, DNS data can become an important tool in securing the network. Being able to analyze network activity and traffic through DNS queries can help network administrators determine where malicious traffic comes from and prevent access to these sources where Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and spam originate.

Today, companies must focus not on their capacity to store massive amounts of data, but rather on their ability to turn that data into meaningful and insightful information. Significant advances are happening in the way we understand and analyze the DNS environment, and important steps are being taken toward managing the addressing system’s own unique Big Data challenges. As the challenges continue to evolve, so too will the tools, as technologists work to keep decision-makers one step ahead of the Big Data deluge, turning it into a major business opportunity.

Celebrating 18 Years of Powering Internet Infrastructure

2013-04-12T15:46:23-04:00

In honor of Verisign's 18th anniversary, we are posting our latest video which highlights what it means to be Powered by Verisign. To learn more about Powered by Verisign visit VeriSignInc.com.

Verisign Shares Q4’2012 Domain Data

2013-04-08T15:32:03-04:00

Today, Verisign released the latest issue of the Domain Name Industry Brief, which showed that the Internet grew by more than six million domain names in the fourth quarter of 2012. The total number of registered domain names now stands at more than 252 million, which represents a 2.5 percent growth rate over the third quarter of 2012. This marks the eighth straight quarter with greater than 2 percent growth.

As shown in the chart below, the order of the top TLDs in terms of zone size changed slightly when compared to the third quarter. In Q4’2012, the largest TLDs in terms of base size were, in order: .com, .de (Germany), .net, .tk (Tokelau), .uk (United Kingdom), .org, .cn (China), .info,.nl (Netherlands) and .ru (Russian Federation).*

Source: Zooknic, December 2012; Verisign, December 2012

The .com and .net TLD registrations experienced a 6.4 percent increase over Q4’2011, bringing the combined total number of domain names in the adjusted zone to approximately 121.1 million. New .com and .net registrations totaled 8.0 million during the fourth quarter of 2012. In the fourth quarter of 2011, new .com and .net registrations totaled 7.9 million.

The .com and .net renewal rate for the third quarter of 2012 was 72.9 percent, up from 72.5 percent in the third quarter of 2012.

Verisign’s average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load during the fourth quarter of 2012 was 77 billion, across all TLDs operated by Verisign, with a peak of 123 billion. Compared to the third quarter of 2012, the daily average increased 16 percent and the peak increased 20.4 percent.

The latest issue of the Domain Name Industry Brief also offers a high-level overview of the challenges and opportunities that big data presents companies of all sizes. “Big Data Can Pose Big Challenges, and Opportunities, for Organizations” also includes a synopsis of the data generated within the DNS, and how companies could use this data to inform business strategy and possibly improve network security.

For more information, download the latest Domain Name Industry Brief.

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*The gTLD and ccTLD data cited in this report are estimates as of the time of this report and subject to change as more complete data is received. Total includes additional tracking of ccTLD Internationalized Domain Names.

Papal Domain Registrations by the Numbers

2013-03-15T16:18:20-04:00

It is no secret that there is a rush to register relevant domain names after any highly publicized event. We saw it with the Royal Wedding, the death of Whitney Houston, and Hurricane Sandy. There are few events so widely publicized as the election of a new Pope, and as expected there was an enormous rush to register domains moments after the names “Jorge Mario Bergoglio” and “Pope Francis I” became known around the world. It has been estimated that well over 600 domains related to the Papacy were registered in the hours following the announcement.

Given that a majority of these registrations are happening on Top Level Domain names powered by Verisign, such as .com and .net, we are able to provide some tools that let you drill down into the details of these surges. For example, Verisign DomainView is a Web and iOS app which shows a real time tag cloud of domains being registered at any given point in time. A look at this app in the hours following the Papal announcement would have shown keywords like “Francis” dominating the cloud.

DomainView also has a handy sub-tool called RZU-Grapher. We did some checking and pulled out a couple of interesting results regarding the news.

Domains registered including the term “Pope” between February 1st and March 15th:

As you can see, there were two surges here: The firstone when Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation and a second greater one when Pope Francis I was chosen.

There are some other interesting results available via DomainView. Even keywords relevant to Pope Francis I, but not directly tied to the Papacy saw bumps.

Domains Registered including the term “Argentina” between February 1st and March 15th:

This particular surge can be attributed to the fact that Pope Francis I is Argentinian. If we continued to look through different searches we would likely find correlated bumps for even more loosely related keywords.

The tendency of people to register .com and .net domain names in the wake of major events is likely not going to go away any time soon. Using Verisign DomainView will allow you to track just how big of an impact announcements like this have on the Internet domain space.

Go ahead and try it out. Do you see any unexpected keywords getting a bump from this or any other news events? Let us know here or via Twitter and Facebook.

Multilingualism on the Internet and other key learnings from WSIS+10

2013-03-14T16:08:27-04:00

Recently I joined a number of world leaders, policy makers, NGOs and other groups at the first World Summit on the Information Society review event, WSIS+10. The discussions focused on how we can all make progress toward achieving a truly multilingual, open Internet for everyone and establishing a knowledge-driven society. Hopefully, some of the key learnings will help shape the next review event in 2014 and also encourage a continuing dialogue about how to lower the digital divides that prevents so many users around the world from navigating the Web in non-native scripts and languages. There were many interesting workshops, seminars and interactive sessions happening at the meeting, but I wanted to share some thoughts about a special panel I participated on regarding Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) with Janis Karklins, Baher Esmat, Minjung Park, and Christine Arida, hosted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

During the session, we discussed the challenges and opportunities facing multilingualism on the Internet, and specifically around IDNs. Today, IDNs have the potential to help make the Internet accessible and language-agnostic by enabling more end users to navigate the Internet in their preferred script and more companies to maintain one brand identity in many scripts. This is why IDNs have generated considerable attention since their introduction in 2000, but adoption worldwide remains a hurdle that we are all working to overcome. IDNs are far from being ubiquitous and trusted, and there is still a ways to go in getting IDNs accepted and embraced globally. For instance, one of the views I shared on the panel was that consumers and small-medium businesses around the globe trust domains in their current state (mostly ASCII) more than they do all localized script domain names. Regional consumers may trust IDNs more, such as Korean consumers trusting IDNs more than Chinese consumers, but there is still a concern that IDNs are not ubiquitous and present rendering challenges in scenarios involving email clients, Web browsers and mobile applications, to name a few. The recent EURid/UNESCO World Report on IDN Deployment 2012 showed an interesting correlation between how improvements in user experiences can drive adoption of IDNs. For instance, 82 percent of respondents believe email support is one of the key challenges to adopt IDNs.

The composition of the world’s Internet population has seen a dramatic change over the last two decades. In 1996, two-thirds of the world’s Internet population was in the U.S. Today, Asia Pacific is the largest region with more than 40 percent of the online population.Thus, the need to make the Web more multilingual and improve the rate of IDN adoption has become critical. Coupled with the exponential growth in the total number of mobile devices shipped globally and we’re looking at a very different picture than we were in the 20th century. This makes the conversation that much more important because the more languages we have represented in the digital world, the better our chances are at reaching the initial targets outlined at the first WSIS summit in Geneva nearly 10 years ago.

We believe general adoption of IDNs won’t happen unless the user experience is enhanced in email clients, Web browsers, mobile applications and popular applications (i.e., Facebook, Twitter). We also believe that the entire IDN ecosystem -- content developers, applications developers, standards bodies, registries and registrars -- need to work together to make IDNs as trusted and ubiquitous as ASCII domain names.

Surely, changes to an ecosystem as expansive as the Internet won’t happen overnight, but the future of IDNs is bright and undoubtedly cannot be ignored. As an integral player in the process, and registry operator for more than one million IDNs, we are working with the entire ecosystem to support the campaign to build greater awareness and adoption of IDNs. By internationalizing key identifiers of the Web, together we can work to localize content and make it accessible to any individual of any background. Now that the groundwork has been laid, it’s time to make the Internet a truly multilingual Web.

Tips For Choosing The Right Domain Name For Small Business

2013-03-08T13:52:18-05:00

Today, people often turn to the Internet first for information about businesses and products – whether they are shopping online, or simply looking for a business’ address or phone number – making an online presence one of the most important assets for business. No matter the size or the industry, a Web presence is vital for businesses to help ensure customers can access the information they want.

The most important decision a business owner can make when establishing an online identity is choosing the right domain name. In this digital age, domain names are central to all online activity and businesses should take careful consideration when making their choice.

Which Top Level Domains Best Serve Small Businesses?

First, business owners need to ask themselves which Top-Level Domain (TLD) best serves their business. TLDs appear to the right of the dot, like .com, .net, .tv. The domain name industry is a competitive marketplace and there are many TLDs to choose from. When deciding where to build your online identity, a TLD can be as important to your business as your second-level domain (what’s to the left of the dot, i.e., your name, brand or product) for many reasons, including security, credibility and search – which will be how most customers find your site.

For more than two decades, .com and .net have been the TLDs of choice for businesses seeking to establish their online presence because they have global recognition and consistent records of security, availability and stability. They are also the TLDs of choice for many search experts because search engines give more weight to websites on .com and .net, making it easier for them to be found.

There is a common misconception that popular TLDs like .com and .net, which are powered by Verisign, are “full” and businesses need to go elsewhere to get the domain they want, but that is simply not true. Millions of new .com domain names are registered every year and millions of great domain names are still available.

I Know Which TLD I Want, But How Do I Choose a Domain?

With recent changes to search algorithms, businesses can see better search engine rankings by registering longer and more descriptive domain names (which conveniently make up the majority of available domains) that include keywords, their brand, their location, or memorable phrases. This is because many Internet users today prefer to simply type a search term into a browser to find what they are looking for, unlike 10 years ago when most typed in a direct domain address to reach a website.

Businesses should take advantage of this evolving behavior and try to think of the keywords their customers might search to find their business and register a combination of those keywords as a domain name. For example, if someone in London is looking for a bakery, they’re likely to search for “the best bakery in London” versus “bakeries.” A business with the domain www.thebestbakeryinlondon.com, or www.bestlondonbakedgoods.com would be served well in this example. Moreover, a trend in marketing today is to register “brand-able phrase” domain names, like www.nowwhat.com, which uses a phrase that’s intended to be catchy so it will draw interest or intrigue to a promotion or advertisement.

Video is also a huge draw for people online and many businesses are establishing video hubs on .tv domains that are associated with their primary websites. A great example of this is www.RedBull.tv and www.Lipsy.tv, which both have distinct .tv websites that house video content and are linked to their .com websites. Registering domains on additional TLDs is an investment in future growth and a great defensive brand protection move, too, as in the past companies have been known to purchase domain names associated with competitors and place questionable content on them

How Do I Buy a Domain Name and Get Started Building My Online Presence?

Using the tips provided above, start by making a list of possible domain names you may want to secure for your business, and how you might want to use them. There are many ways domain names can be used to establish a Web presence. From free and low cost channels that require little to no investment or technical expertise - like redirecting to a social media site - to a full featured customized website, the control that having a domain name provides is critical because it allows businesses to scale their Web presence as they grow without the risk of losing customers.

Once you have a solid list, visit Verisign’s Who-Is tool to see if your desired domains are available. You may find that the domain you have your heart set on has been registered by someone else. If this is the case, you have the option to make an offer to purchase the domain from the holder - known as the registrant in the domain industry - but the sale price is up to the registrant. You can also simply adjust your desired domain name and search again until you find one that is available.

Once a business decides which domains it wants to register, the next step is to decide which registrar to purchase from. Registrars are effectively domain retailers that send the necessary domain name system (DNS) information to a registry like Verisign – the wholesaler – to register a domain name on behalf of registrants. It sounds complicated, but it really isn’t.

Many registrars also provide online tools to help people search for available domain names and create, optimize and promote websites around their new domain names once registered. Since small businesses often don’t have employees dedicated to building and supporting a website, registrars can be business owner’s one-stop-shop to help establish and grow their online identity.

For more information about how to build an online presence, visit www.verisigninc.com/smallbiz.

Cloud-Based DDoS Protection and Managed DNS Services Helping to Increase Operational Efficiency and Thwart Large Attacks

2013-02-28T11:43:52-05:00

As businesses continue to move critical operations online, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are increasing in frequency, sophistication and range of targets. In a 2011 Verisign study, 63% of respondents reported experiencing at least one attack that year, while 51% reported revenue loss as a result of downtime from the attack. Those numbers are undoubtedly higher today as the size, frequency and complexity of DDoS attacks continue to grow. Mitigation against these types of attacks is challenging and generally requires layered solutions across data centers and the cloud management. The success of these attacks and their ability to damage a company’s infrastructure, revenue and reputation is indicative that many IT managers still haven’t found the right protection formula to proactively mitigate them.

A DDoS attack occurs when a “botnet” (a group of compromised computers) is used to send an overwhelming amount of "bad traffic" to an intended target, such as a company’s website. Computers can become “bots” when they're infected with a virus or other malware through a compromised website or malicious email. This usually happens completely behind the scenes with the user having no idea their PC is part of a botnet. The botnet is directed by a botnet command and control that tells all of the bots who/what/when/where and how to attack. The target of the attack usually spends so much time trying to handle the bad traffic that legitimate visitors, or customers, are crowded out and unable to get to the site.

Let's use an e-commerce site for example. Nearly every e-commerce site has an "Add to Cart" button. If a DDoS attacker could script a thousand bots (some botnets have over a million bots) to simulate clicking on that "Add to Cart" button and generate more traffic than the site could handle, legitimate shoppers would have no chance of getting their click in. The key to fighting a complex attack like this is being able to differentiate a real shopper from a bot so the website can service one and ignore the other.

With the ease of access to the Internet and prevalence of social media today, unsuspecting computer users are making it easier than ever for malicious actors to target them with malware. This trend has helped provide the perfect environment for DDoS attacks to grow both in size and complexity. In fact, attacks of 100 Gigabits per second (Gbps) have been recorded. To put that into context, the largest recorded DDoS attack was 2Gbps in 2002. Considering that most websites have less than 1Gbps of network bandwidth, even small attacks today can quickly prove devastating.

In addition it's not just Web infrastructure the attackers are targeting, but increasingly the Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure as well. Arbor Networks’ 2012 Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report indicated that 41% of respondents experienced DDoS attacks against their DNS infrastructure. The DNS acts like the global phonebook for the Internet; it's critical to the functioning of the Web. Computers don't understand domain names, only numeric IP addresses, so when someone wants to visit "www.example.com", their computer asks, or queries, the DNS system "What is the IP address of www.example.com?"The DNS replies with the IP address, and the Web surfer is on their way. If the DNS system is unavailable, users are unable to find their desired sites and those sites can potentially experience significant damage to online revenue streams, reputation and brand.

We’ve seen this with several recent attacks against financial institutions and others that used new malicious code to attack the DNS sub-system of the victim organizations. This type of attack brought the targets down in two ways; bandwidth exhaustion and by overwhelming processing capacity.

Bandwidth exhaustion, a result of continuous querying of the victim DNS by a botnet, causes the network pipes of the target’s DNS server to become saturated so that no legitimate requests can make it through, resulting in an error message for legitimate users. This situation also becomes complicated by a ton of very large DNS packets being sent, creating a situation in which the target DNS server has to inspect and answer each packet, thus overwhelming it's transactional capabilities. So, even if the attack doesn't saturate the bandwidth, it still saturates the computing resources of the target. Pretty sneaky.

DDoS attacks, while previously a nuisance, are now a fact of life on the Web. They aren't going anywhere, so enterprises need to have a "battle plan" for combating this ever-evolving threat. In 2013, we expect to see more enterprises trying to block harmful traffic before it reaches the network or application to eliminate the many risks associated with cyber-attacks, like data breaches and network downtime. As the traditional solutions on which many enterprises have relied for this - like over-provisioning bandwidth and firewalls - have proved costly and ineffective, companies will turn to cloud-based DDoS protection and managed DNS services to enable rapid deployment, provide transactional capacity to handle proactive mitigation, and eliminate the need for significant investments in equipment, infrastructure and subject matter expertise. Taking the cloud approach will help businesses trim operational costs while hardening their defenses to thwart even the largest and most complex DDoS attacks.

These cloud-based solutions will be critical in the future (they arguably already are). As companies and individuals become more reliant on the Internet for critical processes and everyday tasks, downtime, no matter the reason, will not be an option. Managed DNS and DDoS protection services are the keys to a frontline defense against cyber attacks and helping to ensure your customers can always reach your site and aren’t driven to the competition.

The Increasing Importance of Online Video

2013-02-15T23:54:37-05:00

Our team at Watch.tv recently talked to several award-winning online video creators about the trend of online video at the International Association of Web TV Awards. In the spirit of the event, the team captured some video of these famed online video producers and actors discussing the importance of owning your online presence on a .tv website, as well as tips and tricks for creating great videos (watch video below). All this great discussion got us thinking about the important role of video as an online communication tool.

Online video is quickly becoming one of the most popular forms of content on the Internet. Cisco is predicting online video will grow so fast that two-thirds of mobile data traffic will be video by 2016, illustrating the growing importance and preference of video for reaching Internet audiences. This trend is really important to understand for businesses – small and large - that often have limited resources to reach the broadest audience.

In a modern version of “a picture is worth 1000 words,” Forrester Research has calculated that a minute of video is worth 1.8 million words [PDF]. Many brands already using online video in their marketing mix can probably attest to the benefits of using this much more engaging format. In fact, some studies show that customers who see a product or service in an online video are 46 percent more likely to seek out more information, and 36 percent of online consumers trust what they learn from video ads. Informative videos can also be used to educate consumers on products they already know about – animated explainations have been shown to increase conversion rates by 20 percent. In this age of information overload, this research suggests that video is a quick and effective communications and marketing tool

To learn more about online video and for a number of helpful tips to get your own online video presence started, visit Watch.tv.