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Chief Executive, The, Jan-Feb, 2003 by Daniel Tynan

KeyBank is ahead of the game; many companies don't even know which domains they own, says Maigred Eichten, vice president of digital brand management for site authentication company VeriSign.

"Five years ago, many big companies had a variety of people registering domain names-business unit heads, brand managers, secretaries," Eichten recalls. "Then employees would leave, the domains would come up for renewal, and there'd be no one to handle it."

The job is complicated by the relatively recent addition of new top-level domains like .info and .biz, as well as by 242 country-level domains, from Ascension Island (.ac) to Zimbabwe (.zw).

Daniel Tynan last wrote about CEOs and their favorite gadgets in December. Send comments to features@chiefexecutive.net