As part of an effort to enhance cybersecurity for r users of its online services, Henrico County general government is moving the domain for its website and email to “.gov.”

Effective July 1, the county’s web address will be henrico.gov and county email addresses will end in @henrico.gov.

Henrico residents are encouraged to update their contact lists and web bookmarks to the new domain. Emails and visitors to the current domain, henrico.us, will be redirected automatically to the .gov address.

“The change to henrico.gov will help our residents and customers identify official, trusted information from Henrico County,” Travis M. Sparrow, county Department of Information Technology director, said.

“Visitors to henrico.gov and recipients of an email from @henrico.gov can be confident that the content is authentic Henrico County government information.”

The .gov domain is available only to official, U.S.-based government organizations and publicly controlled entities, noted Sparrow.

The new domain also will help users recognize the official county website and genuine emails from county staff and avoid phishing attempts and websites that may attempt to impersonate county personnel and offices, he noted.

The web and email domains for Henrico County Public Library and Henrico County Public Schools will not be affected by the change. Those addresses will remain henricolibrary.org and @henricolibrary.org; and henricoschools.us and @henrico.k12.va.us, respectively.

In advance of the general election in November, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI have recommended election offices and state, local and other government entities adopt the .gov domain to reduce impersonation and cybersecurity risks.