Transferring an active domain involves changing the domain name registrar that provides the domain registration service, so after the transfer itself, you’ll have to manage things like renewal payments or DNS record updates through the new domain registrar. The transfer process itself is standard with most universal and country-specific Top-Level Domain extensions. Some country-code extensions are more specific and entail different procedures, but in the general case transferring a domain entails a few necessary procedures and one of them is unlocking the domain name. The domain lock is a security feature, which is being adopted by more and more domain registry organizations. It is a default feature supported by all generic top-level domain names. If a domain is locked, it will not be possible to start a transfer procedure, so no one can even try to register your domain name. The lock can be annulled only through the account where the domain is registered and all new domains that support this option are locked by default when they are registered.
