Prophylactic Registration Mandate
The Prophylactic Registration Mandate in cybersecurity is a proactive and preventive strategy primarily used for domain name protection. It is a policy or mandate in which an organization secures or registers, defensively, multiple domain names that are similar to or variations of its primary brand domain. The term "prophylactic" means preventative, and the mandate ensures these similar names are registered by the rightful brand owner rather than a malicious third party.
Purpose and Function
The core function of a Prophylactic Registration Mandate is to prevent cybersquatting, typosquatting, and domain spoofing attacks.
Blocking Impersonation: The primary goal is to keep malicious third parties from registering domains that look confusingly similar to the official brand domain. If an attacker registers a look-alike domain, they can launch highly convincing phishing campaigns that steal customer credentials or host fraudulent content, leading to severe financial loss and reputational damage.
Expanding the Perimeter: This strategy registers domains across various relevant Top-Level Domains (TLDs) (e.g., .com, .net, and country codes like .uk or .cn) and includes common misspellings or common word additions (like company-support.com). This expands the brand's digital perimeter to block unauthorized entry.
Defensive Registration: These registered domains are usually inactive or merely redirect to the organization's legitimate website, serving a purely defensive purpose. This provides a cost-effective, preemptive method for securing a digital asset that would otherwise require expensive, time-consuming legal action (such as a UDRP proceeding) to reclaim after an incident occurs.
In essence, a prophylactic registration mandate enables an organization to remediate threats before they materialize, shifting the security posture from reactive to proactive, much like a vaccination program.
ThreatNG is purpose-built to execute the principles of a Prophylactic Registration Mandate by systematically identifying the domain name permutations and related digital assets that an attacker could register for malicious purposes. This preemptive identification enables the organization to take defensive action before an attack materializes.
ThreatNG's Role in a Prophylactic Registration Mandate
External Discovery
ThreatNG performs purely external unauthenticated discovery to map the external digital presence. This process is the initial step in identifying all legitimate and all potential brand-impersonating names an attacker could use.
Example of ThreatNG Helping: The discovery process includes identifying the organization's current and historical domain registrations. ThreatNG proactively discovers and flags all relevant Top-Level Domains (TLDs), including Generic TLDs (such as .com, .org) and various Country Code TLDs (such as .uk, .de, .cn), ensuring the organization knows which TLDs it needs to monitor and register defensively.
External Assessment
ThreatNG's assessments and ratings directly quantify the threat posed by unregistered or malicious look-alike domains, guiding the mandate's budget and prioritization.
Brand Damage Susceptibility Security Rating (A-F): This rating is based on findings across Domain Name Permutations (available and taken) and Web3 Domains (available and taken).
Example in Detail: ThreatNG's assessment finds that a common Domain Name Permutation—specifically a homoglyph substitution where 'o' is replaced with '0' (c0mpany.com)—is currently available. This available domain is a high-risk liability for brand damage, receiving a poor rating. This finding serves as a direct, quantified mandate to the organization to perform a prophylactic registration of that specific domain variation before an attacker can claim it for phishing.
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility Security Rating (A-F): This rating includes Domain Name Permutations (both available and taken) and checks for Domain Permutations with Mail Record.
Example in Detail: The assessment finds that the domain permutation company-support.com (a Targeted Key Word addition) is in use and has an active email record. This indicates an active threat actor is using the domain for phishing. The mandate then shifts from prophylactic registration to proactive takedown or legal action, based on ThreatNG's finding that the defensive registration opportunity was missed.
Reporting
ThreatNG's reporting ensures that the data required to execute the prophylactic registration mandate is clear, justified, and actionable.
Reporting (Security Ratings, Prioritized): The reports communicate the list of high-risk, available domain permutations directly linked to the Brand Damage Susceptibility rating, providing the necessary justification to the legal and finance departments for the defensive registration expense.
Continuous Monitoring
Continuous Monitoring is the essence of sustaining a Prophylactic Registration Mandate, as it ensures that the organization is immediately alerted to new threats or lapsed registrations.
Example of ThreatNG Helping: A new TLD, such as .bank, becomes available, or an existing Domain Name Permutation that the organization chose not to register suddenly becomes available because a third-party registration lapsed. Continuous monitoring instantly detects the new availability of the domain permutation, triggering an alert for immediate prophylactic registration.
Investigation Modules
ThreatNG's investigation modules provide tools to identify all potential registration candidates, beyond simple misspellings.
Domain Intelligence / Domain Name Permutations: This module detects manipulations in the form of substitutions, additions, bitsquatting, hyphenations, insertions, omissions, repetition, replacement, subdomains, transpositions, vowel-swaps, dictionary additions, TLD-swaps, and homoglyphs.
Example in Detail: An analyst uses this module to identify that the bitsquatting variation, compamy.com (a one-bit error), and the Web3 Domain equivalent, company.eth, are both available. The prophylactic mandate can then be executed to register both the traditional and Web3 permutations, securing the brand across emerging digital landscapes.
Social Media: This module helps identify which brand-related names others are using, indicating a need for defensive action.
Example in Detail: The Username Exposure feature finds that an organization's product name, ThreatNG_Product, is a taken username on a social media platform, even though the domain is clear. This finding can lead to a policy mandate to acquire the username or register the matching domain name proactively to prevent social media brand impersonation.
Intelligence Repositories (DarCache)
The intelligence repositories provide external, real-world context to inform registration prioritization.
ESG Violations (DarCache ESG): Monitoring this can help identify keywords or narratives that malicious actors may use. For example, suppose the company has a known Environment-related ESG Violation. In that case, the mandate should prioritize registering permutations that include negative keywords, such as https://www.google.com/search?q=company-pollution.com, as these are high-risk targets for brand abuse.
Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's ability to identify high-risk, available domains can be seamlessly integrated with domain management tools to automate the required actions.
Cooperation with Domain Registrar/Management Platforms: When ThreatNG's Domain Name Permutations module identifies a high-risk, available domain permutation (e.g., a homoglyph of the primary domain), this finding can be fed directly to a complementary Domain Registrar/Management Platform. This platform can then automatically trigger a prophylactic registration process using pre-approved funds and TLD policies, completing the mandate with zero human intervention and minimal time delay.
Cooperation with Legal and Compliance Platforms: If ThreatNG detects a Domain Name Permutation that is already in use and configured with a Mail Record, this intelligence can be sent to a complementary Legal and Compliance Platform. This platform can then automatically generate the necessary documentation and initiate a UDRP (Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy) or takedown request, automating the legal enforcement aspect of the mandate.
