Guidance for high-risk individuals to protect your website and custom email domain

This guidance is for high-risk individuals who already have their own website or custom email domain, or who intend to set one up. If you are a high-risk individual and you do not manage (or intend to manage) your website or domain yourself, you should refer this guidance to the person who maintains them on your behalf.

The guidance outlines:

• how and why you may be targeted
• how you can protect your domain
• how you can protect emails sent from your domain
• how you can protect your website

It also signposts to the NCSC services that will help you manage the security of your website and custom email domain.

How and why you may be targeted

Threat actors may try to gain control of your domain name, website or emails for different motivations. They may seek to damage your reputation or cause you embarrassment, promote their own views, or profit financially from you, your contacts or visitors to your site.

Securing your domain name

To set up a website, or to send and receive emails from a custom email address, you need a domain name.

Domain names, such as example.co.uk, are purchased through domain name registrars. They are intermediaries who work with registries to handle the registration and allocation of domain names.

As your website and email domain rely on the security of your domain name, threat actors may try to gain control of your domain name to hijack your website, email accounts and other services that use it.