Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Somewhere out there, a domain that looks almost exactly like yours may already be registered. Maybe it swaps one letter. Maybe it uses a Cyrillic character that is visually identical to a Latin one. Maybe it just adds the word "login" or "secure" to your brand. These lookalike domains are the raw material of phishing, and most companies have no idea how many exist for their brand until something goes wrong.

DNS TTL is one of those settings nobody thinks about until it bites them. Then they think about it a lot. This guide explains what DNS TTL is, how it works in plain language, and how to pick the right value for your records. By the end you will know what to set, when to change it, and why it matters when you migrate to a new server.

DNS monitoring should be simple. You want to know if something changed. You want to know if a record propagated. You want to know if a phishing site just went live with your brand name in the domain. But in practice it takes work. You log in to a dashboard. You click through menus. You run a check, copy the output, paste it somewhere else. You repeat that process every time someone on the team asks a question. AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT could help.