#dns #hijacking #infrastructure You have an idea, cofounders, and a great company name. Time to pick and buy a domain! ## Video ![](https://youtu.be/gyPI3I8iGXs) #dns #domain #registrar ## Pick a domain After talking to your lawyers, finding a company name you can use and a domain that goes with it. Steer away from the cutesy TLDs for the following reasons: 1. Do you want your future unicorn to be controlled by a foreign state? 2. Are you aware that stupid gTLDs are often blocked by corporate firewalls? For example, my [dumb blog](https://recyclebin.zip) is often unreachable in company networks. Don't do that if you want to sell to them. ## Buy it Buy it, or them, as you might want to get a few of them. Do not go crazy trying to buy all permutations, you're not a bank everyone is trying to impersonate yet, but think of how you want to structure your names between corporate systems and production. Many companies run email and websites on one domain, and corporate systems on another one. ## Secure it 1. Buy the domain on a registrar like [[Hover]] or [[Cloudflare]], with an account tied to a personal [[Google Workspace and Gmail|Gmail]] account with MFA (or, as Google calls it, [2SV](https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185839?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop)) enabled. Until your domain is setup, you do not have a work email to do this with, and attackers love stealing domains. **For extra security**, consider using a dedicated gmail account, not used in day to day activities. 2. For now, enable [WHOIS Privacy](https://www.hover.com/whois). Real companies shouldn't hide WHOIS content, but you don't even have good contacts or an address to put in there anyway. 3. Enable what [[Hover]] calls Transfer Lock, to [prevent edits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registrar-Lock) to the domain like "haha I'm moving it to MY registrar now". 4. Enable Auto Renew - while we should not use this [[Hover]] account long enough for that to matter, why risk it? ## Next Now that we have a domain with minimal security, we can set up the first big piece of our corporate IT infrastructure, email. We'll do that in [[SE01E02 Google Workspace and Gmail]].