Your Whole Business is Held Hostage by One Login

 

It’s Not the Smart Hackers. It’s the Simple Mistake.

We often spend our time tackling big IT challenges—server migrations, disaster recovery, and network overhauls. We fix big IT problems every day, but the worst disasters aren't caused by tricky computer attacks. They are caused by one thing that is terrifyingly simple: a mistake by a person that locks you out of your own business.

This all comes down to your Domain Name Registration. That small, yearly bill is the main key to everything you do online. If you lose control of that login, your whole digital business goes silent. Your website, all your emails, your sales system—they all stop because of a missed payment or a password one person forgot.

This is the Small Mistake, Big Bill—the minimum cost of fixing a total emergency that should never, ever happen.

One Forgotten Password = Zero Business Days.

Everything your business does online is tied to one single login for your domain company. If only one person has that key, your business is one forgotten phone or one day off away from a complete and sudden shutdown.

This single point of failure is terrifyingly common:

• The Worker Who Quit and Locked the Doors: We once watched a massive transportation client spend two agonizing days completely offline because the employee who managed the domain registrar account had quit. They had no backup, and recovering the account was a grueling process of proving ownership—a scenario that had the CEO talking about insurance claims.

• The Single User Trap: We recently dealt with a real estate firm that suddenly went dark. Their website vanished, their email stopped cold. The culprit? A basic credit card renewal for their domain registration failed, and the only person who could log in to fix the payment was gone. Whether it's a departed employee or just an inaccessible one, relying on one person's phone or memory for critical system access means your business is always one missed call away from absolute crisis.

Getting control of a domain back means a long, stressful process of proving ownership to the domain company—a delay that no business can afford.

Our Plan is to Make Your Digital Setup Team-Safe

Our job is to create systems that make these total lockouts impossible. This means we stop relying on just one person and set up a strong, team-based access that cannot be broken by a simple human error.

1. Cloudflare = Safe Sharing

We move your important domain setup to safe, flexible tools like Cloudflare.

• Less Risk: Most normal domain companies make you share your main password with any vendor who needs access—a huge safety risk. We remove that danger.

• Team Control: Cloudflare lets you safely share access. This means we can manage your DNS and fix urgent issues like a failed payment without needing the main password to your account.

We also use this move to put complicated setups (like having your domain and your DNS in two different places) onto one safe tool. This makes fixing problems much easier.

2. Guard the Key For the Whole Team

If a main password must be used, we make sure it is protected from being lost:

• Better Security Codes (2FA): We get rid of the unsafe security codes sent by text message (called 2FA) and move the access to secure apps that the whole team can use, like Bitwarden. This means the keys are held by the support team, not just by one person's cell phone.

Safety Is Better Than Stress

This is not a cost; it is the cheapest, best insurance policy you can buy.

The minimum cost to fix a locked domain and get service back is about $250 in labor for Interlock IT. By spending that small amount before a crisis hits, you stop the huge, unrecoverable costs of two days of lost sales, losing customer trust, and the pain of a business shutdown.

At Interlock IT, we make sure the safety of your domain—the most important small detail of your whole online business—is perfect. Because the most important work in IT is often the work you never even notice.

Ask yourself now: If the person who set up your company’s domain could not be reached, could your IT team log in and fix a payment problem?If the answer is "No," your business is in danger, and it's not a question of if, but when, you will shut down.

Contact us today.

The Last 20%: Why Interlock IT Sweats the Small Stuff (Like Your Domain Name Security)

 We often spend our time tackling big IT challenges—server migrations, disaster recovery, and email flow. However, we know that in business, just like in any complex project, it’s the last 20% of the work, the small, often-overlooked details, that truly defines quality and earns client trust.

And one of the most critical, yet frequently neglected, "small details" is the security and management of your domain name.

What’s in a Domain Name?

Your domain name—like yourcompany.com—is the internet's front door. When a client types that address, a crucial, silent process known as DNS (Domain Name Service) begins. DNS is the internet's directory; it translates the name into a numerical address (IP address) so browsers can find your server.

The Technical Insight

When analyzing domains, we look at who manages what. For example, for interlock.ws, the registration is with GoDaddy.com, but the name servers are with Cloudflare. This is a great demonstration of a key rule: you can choose a separate, specialized provider to manage your name servers for better performance and security, even if your domain is registered elsewhere.

Since the entire internet relies on it, your DNS is a prime target for hacking, where criminals try to redirect your customers to a malicious, fake website. This is why we focus heavily on two things: Secure Access and Reliable Providers.

Security Tip: Cloudflare Advantage

Our experience has shown the value of specialized DNS providers like Cloudflare:

• Free Protection: They offer essential basic DNS services for free, including high-level security like DNSSEC. DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions) is a suite of extensions that uses digital signatures to verify that the DNS data you receive is authentic and hasn't been tampered with. This effectively protects your clients from spoofing and cache poisoning attacks.

• The Secure Access Problem: Many standard registrars often require you to give a vendor (like us!) your primary domain account login to manage your records. This is a massive security risk. Cloudflare solves this by letting us manage the DNS records securely without ever touching or compromising your main, high-value domain account login.

The High Cost of Lost Access

Here’s a common, costly scenario we frequently see:

1. Lost Credentials: Clients often lose access to their domain registrar and DNS accounts due to staff turnover or poor documentation.

2. Failure to pay the renewal invoice on time leading to a shut down 

3. Crisis Mode: When access is lost, you can't fix mission-critical problems like email outages (affecting Google Workspace/Microsoft 365) or major website downtime.

4. The Fix-It Fee: Recovering or migrating a domain from scratch is complex, stressful, and expensive. Even a standard migration fix typically costs $250 for two hours of labor, with complex cases (like those involving numerous domains) costing significantly more.

By proactively ensuring your credentials are secure and your DNS is on a flexible, stable platform, we prevent this expensive headache before it even starts.

It’s the Last 20% That Earns Your Referral

The philosophy guiding our service is simple: customer satisfaction isn't just about handling a big emergency; it’s about flawless execution.

• Preventing Painful Moments: We know that a client remembers the pain of an unpatched hole in the ceiling or a small defect left unfixed. In IT, that means saving you from the $250 migration fee because we proactively set up a robust, easy-to-manage domain infrastructure.

• Driving Trust: By eliminating these small, painful moments and ensuring all systems are secure and documented, we earn not just your business, but your referral.

That attention to the "last 20%" of detail—including the technical security of your domain—is the Interlock IT difference.

Do you know who has access to your domain registrar? If you’re not sure, let us perform a quick, no-obligation check—it can save you significant time and money down the road. Contact us today.

Tired of DIY IT? Why Your Small Business Needs a Full IT Team (Without the Full-Time Price Tag)

 

As a small or medium-sized business owner, you're constantly juggling priorities. You know technology is critical, but the thought of hiring a full-time IT expert? It often feels like a luxury you just can't afford. The salary, benefits, training...it adds up fast.

So, you end up with a revolving door of tech support "fixes," or worse, you're trying to figure out complex network issues yourself (and losing valuable time in the process).

But what if you could have an entire team of certified IT specialists at your disposal for less than the cost of one mid-level employee?

The "One-Person IT Shop" Dilemma

Let's be honest: one person, no matter how brilliant, can't be an expert in everything. They can't simultaneously be:

• A Cybersecurity Guru: Staying ahead of ransomware, phishing, and the latest threats.

• A Cloud Architect: Optimizing your Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, setting up secure cloud storage.

• A Data Backup Specialist: Designing and managing a bulletproof system to protect your most valuable information.

• Help Desk Support: Handling every password reset and software glitch.

• A Strategic Advisor: Planning for future tech needs and budget.

It's simply too much for one individual. This often leaves critical areas vulnerable or neglected until a crisis hits.

Your Business Deserves an IT Team (Without Breaking the Bank)

Instead of hiring one person, you gain an entire roster of specialists:

1. On-Demand Expertise: Need help with a complex server migration? There's a specialist for that. Worried about your data's security? A cybersecurity expert is on the case. Their team brings collective knowledge and experience across every facet of IT.

2. Proactive Problem Solvers: Interlock IT doesn't just fix things when they break. We proactively monitor your systems 24/7, identify potential issues before they become problems, and perform routine maintenance to keep everything running smoothly. This means less downtime for your staff. For clients focused on advanced email security and brand protection, we also offer comprehensive DMARC reports and management as an add-on service, ensuring your email ecosystem is durable against spoofing and phishing attempts.

3. Instant, Expert Support for Your Staff: Your employees will get instant, knowledgeable help for any tech issue – from a simple password reset to resolving a software crash. This keeps them productive, reduces frustration, and allows them to focus on their core job functions, rather than waiting for IT fixes.

More Expertise and Less Expense with Interlock IT

When you partner with Interlock IT, you're not just getting "tech support." You're gaining a strategic partner that ensures your technology is sturdy, secure, and always working for you. You unlock:

• Predictable IT Costs: Say goodbye to unexpected repair bills.

• Enhanced Security: Peace of mind knowing your data is protected by experts.

• Increased Productivity: Empowered employees with reliable tech and instant support.

Stop struggling with your IT. It's time to equip your business with the expert team it deserves, without the prohibitive cost of building one in-house.

Contact Interlock IT today.

Security breach! How to prevent your G Suite domain from getting hijacked

Legacy security solutions are no longer as effective against todays clever hacking methods, and on-premise hardware can often lack sufficient scale and performance to protect internet connected application infrastructures as they grow. As more organizations move their operations online, they need a cloud-based security solution that can defend their domain, email, valuable data, and in some instances, brand image.

Lately we have witnessed increasingly clever phishing attempts in our customer base. Some of these attempts are so sneaky you'd need to do a double or triple take to notice it as a red flag. Take for example a long time customer of ours who was sent an email with an almost identical domain name (only one letter was different). The email came from the actual domain name, meaning that the hacker had invested the time and money to purchase and configure the domain with the intent to hijack the real customer domain. Luckily our customer realized it was a malicious email and immediately deleted it and reported the domain to Google.

G Suite's cloud based security protocols are top notch. Google recently added a new security feature in Gmail to warn users when responding to emails sent from an external domain and not someone in their contacts. This feature increases awareness against forged email messages, impersonation, as well as common user-error when sending mail to incorrect addresses.

When a user clicks 'reply' in Gmail, Google scans the recipient list, including addresses in CC to verify the risk level. If a recipient is external to the user’s organization, not present in their Contacts or not someone the user interacts with regularly, the warning is displayed automatically. This is a subtle, yet powerful, way to keep your users vigilant.

A valuable step to take to prevent a hijacking is to create a rule in Gmail to bounce emails from domains that have close spellings. Here's how:

1. Login to your G Suite Admin account.
2. Go to Apps ---> G Suite ---> Mail ---> Advanced Settings
3. Under the Spam Section, Blocked Senders ---> Configure
4. Enter a (very) short description for the summary of what's being blocked
5. Use an existing list or create a new list for the addresses that are going to be rejected (you can choose single or multiple domains and single or multiple email addresses.)
6. Optional; you can edit the rejection notice that the sender will receive in the blocked bounce-back (leaving it blank will use the default).
7. "Bypass this setting for messages received from addresses or domains within these approved senders lists." - this option can be ignored (defaults to being checked off, but does not matter unless a list is created or used in this section).  This option also serves the purpose of allowing exceptions that can still send (eg. malicious.ca is blocked, but hacker@malicious.ca is allowed, or malicious.ca is blocked, but hackers.malicious.ca is allowed to bypass).

As long as we live in a world of technology, attackers will always look for ways to target us. As the internet evolves, the methods and techniques used by these attackers evolve along with it. It's important to understand that vulnerabilities do exist and the best way to avoid a compromised system is to set preemptive measures like the ones G Suite offers. The challenge with web security lies in that very changing nature. True cloud solutions offer the latest and most secure methods to provide the utmost protection for your online assets.

To learn more about cloud security and G Suite, contact Interlock IT today!

Is your company domain safe from spoofing?

There's no doubt that in the last two decades email has become the backbone and primary source of business communication. Businesses rely heavily on emails to communicate internally with their own staff as well as externally with clients and partners. Gmail alone has well over one billion monthly active users. Such heavy email dependency requires immense reliability and security. Unfortunately, we find many businesses are unaware that their backend mail settings are not configured for optimum reliability and security.

When it comes to securing Gmail admin settings, it's crucial to have the correct DNS (Domain Name Settings) configured to prevent domain spoofing. What's domain spoofing? In simple terms, it's the unauthorized use of a third-party domain name, primarily in an email message, in order to pretend to be someone else. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are all security standards followed in G Suite applications to keep your domain safe. SPF (Sender Policy Framework) records allow the user to easily identify spam messages for their domain. DKIM (Domainkeys Identified Mail) attaches a new domain name identifier and encrypts the message to validate authorization for the message, and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) allows the user to instruct how Gmail handles unauthenticated emails coming from within the domain. These may all sound complicated but are quite necessary to keep your users and domain safe. Use the Google Toolbox MX checker to see if your domain is configured correctly. If there are issues you will see the following prompt when you run the check:

If this is what you see when you check your domain, contact us! We highly recommend using an expert to configure these security protocols as we've seen customers claim their IT staff has already set these up, only to find out later that it was configured incorrectly. This cost of properly setting these protocols up is negligible in comparison to the potential damage they prevent.

In our several years of experience, we've seen users simply don't realize the importance of having the proper DNS records set up, simply because it was not given importance or because it was too complicated for their IT staff to configure correctly. To help our cloud friends enjoy a safe and secure domain, InterlockIT will clean up your DNS records for FREE in exchange of transferring your G Suite subscription to us as your reseller (some conditions apply). It's a win win since you get free assistance to protect your domain as well as all the benefits of having a Google Cloud Partner. Contact us today and lets secure your domain!