Years of cybersecurity mismanagement and multiple data-security failures on GoDaddy’s webhosting platform have led to a formal complaint from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, demanding GoDaddy “establish a comprehensive data security program,” which must be implemented within 90 days, or risk incurring fines of up to $51,744 per violation.
The Complaint
Released on January 15, the FTC complaint reads:
“GoDaddy has failed to implement reasonable and appropriate security measures to protect and monitor its website-hosting environments for security threats…As a result of GoDaddy’s data security failures, it experienced several major compromises of its hosting service between 2019 and December 2022, in which threat actors repeatedly gained access to its customers’ websites and data, causing harm to its customers and putting them and visitors to their websites at risk of further harm.”
The FTC claims that GoDaddy has not only failed to set up basic cybersecurity practices, such as multi-factor authentication and threat-monitoring, but has also misled customers about the security of its webhosting platform. The mismanagement on the part of the company has left its hosting sites vulnerable to cyberattacks and data breaches.
The Fallout
As the 90-day period has not yet lapsed, no legal action has yet been taken against GoDaddy. Following the release of their formal complaint, the director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, Samuel Levine, stated,
“Millions of companies, particularly small businesses, rely on web hosting providers like GoDaddy to secure the websites that they and their customers rely on. The FTC is acting today to ensure that companies like GoDaddy bolster their security systems to protect consumers around the globe.”
ALTERNcloud’s Edge DNS & Next-gen Edge CDN Services
Properly managing cybersecurity risks is paramount for businesses and consumers alike. That’s why it’s important to have both DNS (Domain Name System) and CDN (Content Delivery Network) management services you trust. ALTERNcloud’s Edge DNS and Next-gen Edge CDN start at just $20.00/month and $35.00/month, respectively.
Edge DNS
DNS is no longer a simple point and click domain management service. It has evolved into a critical optimization tool for network administrators and DevOps alike. We provide real-time traffic routing to optimize the resolution process and offer a global DNS with data centers and PoPs, which mitigates any latency due to distance. We augment our managed DNS services with built-in network monitoring, health checks, performance monitoring, and query analytics. We ingest data from these sources and use it to optimize how traffic flows to your cloud services. Five managed domains and five million queries total are included.
Next-gen Edge CDN
At ALTERNcloud, our globally distributed network consists of more than 150 CDN PoPs and 25 secure Cloud locations. All products and services seamlessly integrate state-of-the-art DDoS and web protection and natively integrate with each other. Plus, our infrastructure lets us tailor our systems to perfectly fit our customers’ individual needs. Pricing starts at $35/month and includes 5 managed CDN resources and 1.5TB traffic per month. After that, only pay for what you use: $2 per additional CDN resource, and from $0.0273 per GB of Egress traffic billed monthly.
