As a curious reader of global consulting service reports, one report especially around Global Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) caught my eye. The world of strategic M&A saw deals totaling about $3.1 trillion USD (source: J.P. Morgan 2024 Global M&A Roadmap). The M&A landscape continues to evolve, driven by factors such as advancements in artificial intelligence, digital transformation, and the need for companies to stay competitive in an ever-changing market.

Despite the numerous Finance, Legal, and Government regulations, one fascinating aspect is how companies manage cultural fit and merge technology stacks while maintaining brand protection. Amid these dynamic market conditions, it is crucial for organizations to balance efficiency and security, especially in the early stages of M&A integration. Focusing on best practices for identity and access management (IAM) during M&A is critical for helping companies navigate complexities and maximize the value of their mergers and acquisitions from the outset.

In this digital age, where applications are the lifeline of a business, an organization’s domain is an important asset. Domains make it easy for users to access websites and services without needing to remember complex numerical IP addresses. Example: “www.google.com“. A domain name is part of an organization’s online identity, helping to establish and maintain brand recognition and credibility. . It serves as a key element in naming, organizing, and managing resources, while also playing a vital role in security and brand identity.

Organizations with hundreds, and thousands of domains can at times find domain management to be complex, costly, and hard for teams to manage. As businesses expand their digital footprint, corporate domain portfolios and related DNS networks also have to grow to keep pace with the expansion. Critical DNS elements like Domains, subdomains, redirects, text, and DNS records must be managed, not just ignored once they are set.

Domain Security and the Crucial Role of IT Ops in M&As

M&As are pivotal events for companies, leading to significant changes and challenges. When companies decide to merge, the focus is primarily on financials, assets, and human resources. One often overlooked aspect of this process is the crucial role played by the IT department.

Given the importance of a domain in the context of a company’s online identity decisions about domain management post M&A are crucial for consistent branding and communication. Be it merging or maintaining them as separate domains. If not managed well, organizations run the risk of the domains getting expired and perhaps leading to security risks.

For instance, Google’s Argentina domain was acquired by web designer Nicolas Kurona for a mere £2 ($2.90). The domain was quickly transferred back to Google. While there was no intention to misuse it, it shows how easy it is to lose control of such a key, high-value asset.

In another instance, a leading sports OTT company suffered an outage outage in an apparent domain renewal mess

Domain Lifecycle and Security can be Complex

Enterprise DNS infrastructure can be complex and involve a multitude of challenges:

• Multiple Stakeholders: Domain and DNS management can involve multiple stakeholders from registration of domains to DNS management – marketing, product, digital operations, IT and attorneys; network operations, IT and Infosec teams
• Lack of Visibility and Governance: Once set, a domain can be forgotten. With M&As, where multiple domains can be involved, the stakeholders may lack a unified view where ownership and governance can be efficiently maintained.
• Multiple Vendors: In certain instances, organizations may have to deal with multiple vendors (Domain Registrars, Managed DNS, Certificate Authorities, TLS Certificates) and tools leading to complex and disjointed processes across teams This makes the seamless management of domains, DNS and TLS certificates nearly impossible. This can have consequences on the overall enterprise security exposure, compliance issues and operation issues (Total Cost of Ownership).
• Security Posture: Enterprise domains can become a frequent target for cybersecurity breaches, resulting in intellectual property theft and brand damage. DNS hijacking and man-in-the-middle attacks put brands and customers at risk of credential and data theft. These exploits are easier to carry out due to the increasing number of domains and extended attack surfaces, which are managed manually by a growing number of people across various vendors.
• Siloed Process: Effective management of domains, DNS and associated security across thousands of domains can be tedious and manual. Network operations and InfoSec typically operate separately. Any compromises in terms of governance, control, security, and compliance ownership can create opportunities for attackers looking to exploit security loopholes.

Best Practices to Manage Domain Lifecycle and Security

In order to effectively manage enterprise Domain and DNS infrastructure, organizations must aim to invest in tools holistically in order to maintain a robust security posture.

• Centralized Control: Manage multiple vendors across hybrid multi-cloud environments – Domain Registrars, Managed DNS, Certificate Authorities, TLS Certificates, Devices – in a single pane of glass.
• Visibility and Insights: Gain holistic visibility into DNS services such as Domain, IPs, DNS Records, DNSSEC Keys, DNS Traffic and Vulnerabilities.
• Self-Service and Automation: Eliminate manual processes through end-to-end automation across Domain and DNS lifecycle Management – Domain Procurement, Renewal, Modification, DNS Records, Change Management and Business Process Automation.
• Compliance and Reports: Enforce DNS compliance policies, access to reports – Domain Expiry, Orphan/Rouge IP Report, DNS Traffic utilization, DNSSEC Keys Expiry and Rollover, and IPAM Violation Report.

How Can AppViewX help?

The AppViewX AVX ONE platform offers unified and central control, visibility, security, and governance across enterprise DNS ecosystems

• Centralized control of multi-vendor DNS ecosystem
• Application centric context
• Insights into TLS, Domains, DNS vulnerabilities and IP blind spots
• Policy driven correlation and compliance across Domain, DNS, IP and CMDB assets
• Self-service automation of Domain and DNS lifecycle
• DNS audit and traffic utilization reports

Multi-Cloud DNS Management

Domain Expiry Trend

Domain and DNS Insights

Self-Service Domain & DNS Automation

Discovery – Application Topology

DNS attacks pose significant risks to internet security and the availability of online services. In summary, maintaining governance and compliance for large domain portfolios and their DNS infrastructure is costly and resource-intensive. As digital footprints grow, reducing these human resource costs requires integrated domain/DNS management or automated tools to lessen manual work. Neglecting essential tasks like domain and DNS audits may save money in the short term but exposes the organization to severe security risks.

As a single unified platform, AppViewX AVX ONE automatically scales to support digital identity and PKI use cases of all types across hybrid infrastructures for enterprise PKI, IAM, DevSecOps, App and Network teams regardless of end customer or MSP deployments. These use cases include Kubernetes and container TLS automation, PKI-as-a-Service (PKIaaS), easy Microsoft PKI modernization, secure code signing, IoT identity security, SSH management, DNS management and control, and Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) readiness for complex hybrid, multi-cloud and edge environments. Deployable on-prem, via dedicated cloud or on SaaS, AVX ONE runs with a single connector and a single code base.

To learn more, request an AppViewX AVX ONE demo today.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Blogs Archive - AppViewX authored by Karthik Kannan. Read the original post at: https://www.appviewx.com/blogs/the-importance-of-domain-and-dns-lifecycle-management-with-mergers-and-acquisitions/