As of the 24th of March, .au second-level domain names are now available in Australia. This means if you have a local connection to Australia or already have a .com.au, .org.au, .gov.au or .edu.au you have until the 20th of September to reserve your .au equivalent domain name, if you don’t secure it after the 20th of September it will become available to the general public. For example, the Chamber’s current domain is www.lcc.asn.au, we now have the first option to purchase www.lcc.au.
This is an important consideration for your business. While the new second-level domain names are shorter and potentially more memorable, they also offer cybercriminals another avenue to conduct fraudulent cyber activities. Opportunistic cybercriminals could register your .au domain name in an attempt to impersonate your business.
For example, if you have currently registered yourbusiness.com.au, a cybercriminal could register yourbusiness.au or yourbusinesscom.au and use these domains to conduct fraudulent cyber activities.
The Australian Cyber Security Centre has recommended that all Australian businesses with existing domain names register their .au equivalents before 20 September 2022. If a business does not reserve their .au equivalent direct domain name during this six-month period, that name will become available to the public on a first come, first served basis.
For more information, please click here or visit Platinum Chamber member Kingthing Marketing’s blog post on the topic.