There is a lot of talk about how foreign actors are attacking our electoral process. Election authorities (and other local governmental bodies) can thwart many of those threats by getting a dot.gov domain. Getting a dot.gov domain name is a simple and relatively inexpensive measure to discourage such mischief.
Why get a dot.Gov domain?
- A dot.Gov domain name will give a governmental voting authority the respect of a government-only domain name.
- A dot.Gov domain will provide a municipal website an official brand.
- Visitors know that it can be trusted because of its official designation by the Federal Government. In contrast, a private company with the same name as your town (or an attacker) could have a .com or .org or .us website but they could not have a dot.gov website.
- Because the process of obtaining a dot.gov domain name is more expensive and requires verification by the Federal Government, attackers rarely are successful in obtaining them and can’t retain them upon challenge by the local government under attack. What seems like an obstacle is actually a feature.
- Look-a-like domains are often used evil doers to exploit visitors or sow confusion. Citizens could visit the wrong website, diverting traffic from the official one, and possibly undermining your reputation. The dot.gov registration process prevents look-a-like domains.
Challenges
- The relative expense of $400 and the more complicated paperwork of acquiring a dot.gov domain is necessary to prevent unauthorized applicants. Buying the other domains is a simple process of entering unverified details and adding credit card information.
- The dot.gov domain is still subject to people’s habit of searching for words with a .com suffix. Thus the municipality should also own both the .org and the .com domains do prevent attackers from buying these look-a-like domains.
- The General Services Administration (GSA) administers is the official domain name registrant for .gov at http://www.nic.gov. If you have any questions, contact the GSA’s Helpdesk at Registrar@dotgov.gov or (877) 734-4688. After you have secured a dot gov domain, your website provider or IT Specialist can set up the mail services needed to connect the dot gov name to an email service provider.
Walt Houser 