The Australian Domain Administration (auDA) have announced that Australian companies will be able to drop the .com from their website addresses in favour of the shorter and simpler .au. As an example of this ‘listermason.com.au’ will be shortened to ‘listermason.au’. This provides a great opportunity for business to easily show that they are Australian based with a quick internet search.
This does mean though that your business will need to secure the .au domain. Existing websites will have a grace period until 20th September 2022 to purchase their new .au domain by demonstrating to the domain provider that they or their business have a connection with Australia. After the 20th September 2022, new domain names will be available to everyone, first come first served.
However, this change over will provide the opportunity for cybercriminals to imitate your business if the domain name is not purchased within the grace period. It also means that if another entity secures the .au name, then you could be forced to buy it from them at a premium.
We strongly recommend that you secure your domain name before 20th September 2022 to help protect cyber-attacks or someone taking your existing domain name.
For more information on the change, please click the link to the Australian Cyber Security website:
https://www.cyber.gov.au/acsc/view-all-content/alerts/new-domain-name-changes-could-leave-your-business-or-organisation-risk
Or, the Australian Domain Administration:
https://www.auda.org.au/au-domain-names/au-domain-names/au-direct
If you need any assistance with securing your .au domain name please contact us.
This article was written by Alex Linton and appeared in our April 2022 newsletter.
