NCSAM week 2: domains, what are they?

Domains are one of the cornerstones of the Internet. Its how we get around the internet.

Domains are things you can recognize like this blog address as an example. Its on a Sub Domain of the root domain. In this case, technology.jaredrimer.net is the sub of jaredrimer.net.

One of the other domains I baught, jaredtech.help, is the main domain when I give out the blog address.

The top level domains, called TLD’s, are pretty common. Some are relatively new like the .help domain that I baught, but there are quite a number of common TLD’s.

The common TLD’s include:

• .com
• .net
• .org
• .gov
• .edu
• .info
• .us

The .us and .info domains are relatively knew, but are becoming popular within companies.

The .com was supposed to be for comercialization purposes like target, walmart and others.

.org was originally meant for organizations which could include non-profits like MENVI.

.info and .us are newer, with .us in the CCTLD spectrum.

CCTLD stands for Country code top level domain and is used in countries which include Europe, the U.S., China, Japan and others.

When I grew up on the Internet, domains were simple web pages.

One of the first pages out there besides the early adopters of course was the baseball team The Los Angeles Dodgers.

I’ve not been to the site in awhile, but it was one of those pages where you could get info about the team and some scheduling. Now of course, the league has a ton of video, audio and more.

Of course, now we need to keep in mind some things about web sites.

• Most of the web site should now be secure or have an SSL certificate on it.
• Over half of spoofed web sites, impersonated sites, or sites ripping off brands are now secure.
• They’re using all kinds of TLD’s including .com, .net, .us, .zip, .email and many others.

Speaking of TLD’s, we recently published an article talking about two new TLD’s being abused. They are .zip and .shop. .shop has been out for several years and only seems to be a domain platform for spam and phishing.

blog post

Since we understand how this works, why don’t you respond and tell us what you do to make sure that you’re as secure as possible with the understanding of threats that plague us today?

There is no judgement, and if you want us to read your responses on air for Wednesday’s or Saturday’s show, please let us know.

Registering is free, and your first comment is moderated. Happy hunting!