Zone file transfer

There are 4 ways you can tell the Government Digital Service (GDS) monitoring and sharing service about domains and subdomains you own. These are:

• AWS Route 53
• Microsoft Azure DNS
• AXFR (Authoritative Zone Transfer)
• send us your domains manually

When we use a commercial provider, we share a second level domain like .gov.uk or .nhs.uk with them. They then use a variety of other public data sources to identify any subdomains that exist.

AWS Route 53

If your organisation uses the AWS Route 53 service to host your domain names, you  can create a read-only profile for us to access the domain lists every night.

This guarantees we monitor an up to date list of domains and subdomains.

Microsoft Azure DNS

If your organisation uses the Microsoft Azure DNS service to host your domain names, you  can create a read-only profile for us to access the domain lists every night.

This guarantees we monitor an up to date list of domains and subdomains.

AXFR (Authoritative Zone Transfer)

If your organisation hosts your own servers or you have third party suppliers, you may be able to enable AXFR. This allows us to access your domain lists every night.

This guarantees we always monitor an up to date list of domains and subdomains.

You can configure AXFR with TSIG for authentication and IP whitelisting for restricted access.

Manual domain transfer

Your organisation can add domains to our monitoring by sending us a list of the domains and subdomains you hold in plain text, CSV, or .zone format.

This can be vital to ensure good monitoring coverage as it is not always clear who owns a domain simply by looking at the services it operates.

Contact

If you need more information about sharing your domain lists, email support@domains.gov.uk.