GoDaddy Gone: Can the Domain Giant Recover Its Reputation?

Monday has not been the best of days for GoDaddy or its millions of customers. Thanks to what appears to be a distributed denial of service attack against the world’s largest domain registrar, the company’s DNS servers are down. With them went an untold number of websites.
Customers are understandably livid that their sites — for many, their entire livelihoods — are on pause. Much of the online anger is currently directed at Anonymous Own3r, the self-proclaimed security leader of Anonymous (to be clear, Anonymous is not taking any responsibility for this attack and Own3r says he is acting solely as himself).
Own3r will likely soon be forgotten. Users will retrieve their websites and mail servers. The real question is, can GoDaddy retrieve its reputation?
Beyond simply getting its network back online, the company is going to have to face questions about its customer service, its security infrastructure and its reliability.

GoDaddy’s Toughest Test Yet

GoDaddy is no stranger to PR nightmares. The company is notorious for its eyebrow-raising Super Bowl ads that have drawn negative comments from users across the world. Then there’s former CEO Bob Parsons and his infamous elephant safari.
GoDaddy’s most recent brush with controversy came thanks to its temporary support for SOPA. The company faced boycotts and mass-transfers before finally agreeing to pull its support from the controversial bill.
None of that had very much impact on GoDaddy’s sales. But Monday’s attack is different. DDoS attacks can happen to anyone, but the problem for GoDaddy is that it happened to them — and the company had, apparently, no reliable emergency plan.

Surviving the Storm

The main goal — the only goal, really — for a webhost is to keep its sites online. This is even more true for companies that host DNS servers, the ones that connect a domain name and IP address — ensuring that when you visit google.com, it directs to the right web server.
It doesn’t matter how cheap your service is, or how many times you advertise during the Super Bowl. If your 10.5 million customers don’t feel comfortable buying domain names with you or recommending you to friends because you can’t be relied upon to perform basic DNS functions, you’re not going to remain the industry leader for much longer.
The success of Monday’s attack gives credence to the idea that GoDaddy is not a secure place to host a site — and that its DNS servers aren’t trustworthy. I’m genuinely shocked that GoDaddy’s entire DNS network was capable of being taken down, despite the fact that the company has nine server facilities around the world. It’s a stark reminder of just how vulnerable networks are.
For now, GoDaddy’s outward response to the incident has been limited to tweets and a few Facebook postings, none of which gave any kind of timeline for restoring service. That will have to change once services come back online.

Read: Mashable