Strengthening security with dot brand domains: Q&A with Nisha Parkash at Sky Group

Question: To get us started, please can you tell us about yourself?  

“I’ve been in the industry fifteen years. I started at a corporate registrar and then I swiftly moved over to Sky.   

In my early career, I started to get leverage on the DNS side of domain management and the implementation and approval of zone files. From this, I was able to understand how to use subdomains and that knowledge carried through to the world of .sky.   

I then moved into the Head of Domain Management for Sky Group, which led me to really being able to get my fingers into .sky. I’d say my specialism within the domain industry and Sky is full domain portfolio management, which translates into how secure a domain name is, DNS abuse, cybersecurity and leveraging your brand.”

Question: What do you see as the main benefits and opportunities of owning a dot brand for organisations?

“There are major acquisitions going on with huge TLDs as the landscape is changing. I’ll give you an example of .ai, which is probably one of the most recognised and desirable TLDs out there now for artificial intelligence. At Sky, for us to register sky.ai would cost an arm and a leg, whereas we can register it the other way – ai.sky. There’s no acquisition or cost there, and we’re utilising the two letters, but we’re leveraging it off a dot brand.  

If you’ve got trademark made-up words, you’re looking at security as being the biggest factor. Whether it’s a .sky generic or a .microsoft, which is not a dictionary word, you’re still able to leverage cybersecurity infrastructure with limited DNS abuse.”  

“There’s barely any DNS abuse if you’re using a dot brand.”   

Question: How could enterprise organisations use a dot brand?

“There are many layers to owning your dot brand. Firstly, most of our registrations host back-end infrastructure with some of our biggest services being built onto .sky because of its security.   

Then you’ve got elements of GDPR in Europe. When that came into effect, it was harder to look at a domain name and know if the organisation authentically owned it. When you’ve got a dot brand, it can only be that brand and it acts as a visible passport in the web browser.  

Even though it’s aesthetically pleasing, it’s also a way to create customer confidence. You can register a dot brand to create territories around the world and show customers that you’re consistent in your approach to customer safety.”

Question: If you’re a brand looking to apply, what should you be thinking about?

“Application rounds come so infrequently, this is definitely the time to take the opportunity. You need to look at it as defence, and then from the point of view that you don’t need to have all the answers right now.  

You only need to apply and obtain the dot brand. If you don’t have it, you don’t have options to make any digital landscape changes within your organisation.   

Speak to people within the organisation at different levels, create a feasibility study, and understand what their point of views are.”

“This is definitely the time to take the opportunity.”   

Question: How was .sky first adopted by the organisation?

“We were always champions of .sky within the domain management team. It’s interesting how we launched it because we ran a Tech Summit within Sky for years, which was all about hosting the innovation of tech on campus. When we were first launching it, we thought if it’s all about innovation, we should send the invites out on .sky. It supported everything that the summit was about because we were talking about how digital landscape tech was changing and how technology was evolving.  

The really great thing was we were able to delete the domain when the summit was over, showing just how much freedom we had.”

Question: What are the most important considerations when selecting a Registry Services Provider?

“I think it’s very case by case. For me, it’s important that there’s that face-to-face relationship and providers understand your goal and vision.”

Question: What have you learned from using .sky?

“There’s no negative. People may say that the cost could be an issue, but when looking at your cost versus not doing an acquisition, eventually that cost is going to balance out along the journey.   

It’s also given us leverage to rebrand so many of our websites. Although it’s about content, you can see how crisp and clear our corporate narrative is because all our corporate domains sit on .sky.  

It’s so amazing to see the list of .sky domains whenever I share a presentation on what’ve we’ve done. It blows my mind a little bit! The consistency that we’ve brought to the corporate space looks incredible.”

Question: What security benefits does having your own dot brand give Sky?

“When you’re an organisation that transacts, there are always opportunities for imposters to leverage your reputable brand to dupe customers into believing they’re transacting with a legitimate company, unaware they are being targeted by a fraudster. We have an obligation to keep customers safe and it’s more important now than ever before to always be innovative in how we do that to keep up with how the digital landscape evolves.

As a company, we’re able to use the .sky TLD as a security angle. Having the TLD allows us to create relevant changes to how we communicate with customers and, in the domain management team, just having the TLD means it offers us a solution when advising our stakeholders. If, over time, we change our email communication to customers, we can send a clear message to state that if the email address does not end in .sky, do not engage or transact.

Changing that landscape does take time but without owning the TLD we would not be able to problem solve in this way as it simply wouldn’t be an option. With this, we’re able demonstrate that we’ve taken all the steps available to us to keep our customers safe.

Every single TLD that is open is an opportunity for a fraudster and imposter. There isn’t that same path with a dot brand.”

“I think one of the really amazing things that a dot brand will do is give security for customers.”  

Question: Where do you see .sky going in the future?

“I think the clear goal now is corporate will always go to .sky. What I love is being able to fire up a new conversation with somebody and give it as an option. I think the end goal here is to have it.  

As long as you’ve got enough champions within the organisation that understand times are changing, you’re going to make use out of your dot brand TLD.”

Question: Thank you for your time Nisha, any final thoughts?  

“We’re strategically trying to look at how we’re changing the future. What you’re not doing today is going to impact the next team that comes in to do this role. Don’t restrict the next generation.”

“You might not think it’s relevant today, but you will not know what’s going to happen in ten years.”