One missing detail can take everything down.
A business owner got a call on a Tuesday morning. His company’s website was down. Not slow. Not broken. Down.
The domain had expired. It had been registered five years earlier by the previous owner, on a personal email account, at a registrar nobody had thought to check. Renewal notices had been going to an inbox attached to a business that no longer existed.
Getting it back took days. Legal involvement. Difficult conversations with someone who had no incentive to be cooperative.
No one had been careless. The previous owner registered the domain properly. The acquisition team focused on what acquisitions usually focus on. It just hadn’t come up.
This is how most of these situations develop. One reasonable decision at a time, layered over years, until something breaks and the gaps become visible.
A basic digital asset inventory covers domains, hosting accounts, SSL certificates, DNS, email infrastructure, backup systems, and emergency contacts. For most organizations it takes a handful of focused hours. Write it down where the team can find it. The value of that document becomes clear the first time something goes sideways and the team knows exactly what to do. Because someone wrote it down.
