Featured Blogs

The Sysadmin’s Guide to Securing Your SaaS Apps

As an admin, app security should be a top priority - but SaaS apps represent a difficult challenge in that regard. How can you protect your business from their risks, while enjoying all their rewards? Within the average enterprise, there are 508 unique cloud applications in use. That number's overwhelming enough on its own without considering that 88% of those applications aren't enterprise ready, or the fact that one in five cloud applications has data sharing as a core functionality. more

Wrap-up: ICANN 46 in Beijing

Earlier this April, the largest ICANN meeting ever -- more than 2,500 attendees -- kicked off in Beijing. Given the imminent addition of hundreds of "dot Brands" to the Internet, the topic of new gTLDs was at the top of the discussion list for all attendees. So far, well over 100 new gTLD applications have passed the Initial Evaluation stage, meaning they're on their way to becoming live domains. more

Ending Cyber-Hubris

Hurricane Katrina will lead the endless finger pointing about what should have been done to strengthen the levees before the storm. However, as a former senior FEMA official under the Clinton Administration explained, "There's only two kinds of levees. Ones that have failed and those that will fail." The same is true for cyber-levees.  more

Lawyer-Impersonator Pleads Guilty over False C&Ds

As if there weren't enough problems with lawyers sending out improper cease-and-desists, Wired News reports that a Nevada man has pleaded guilty to impersonating a lawyer to extort domain registrants to turn over their domain names. "A Nevada man pleaded guilty Thursday to his plotting to steal domain names from their legitimate owners by impersonating a California intellectual property lawyer and send threatening letters to domain name owners in hopes of convincing them to turn over the domains to him..." more

Leaving it to the Last Second - The Leap Seconds Conundrum

Thanks to the moon, the earth's rate of rotation is slowing down. It's a subtle interaction and the modeling of planetary dynamics predicts that the earth's rotation should be slowing down by an average of 2.3 milliseconds per century. But this is not quite so uniform... So what? Maybe we can start by looking at how we've defined time over history... It's only been in recent decades that we've turned our attention to timekeeping with an obsessive level of detail that rivals, and maybe even surpasses, train spotting. more

NETmundial Initiative Taking Positive Steps Forward

The Net Mundial conference in Sao Paulo in April 2014 added a new element to the global Internet Governance Ecosystem. It demonstrated that the multistakeholder model for the governance of the Internet is able, not only to discuss issues of global importance, as we do it now for nearly ten years within the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), but it can also produce a concrete outcome. The Universal Declaration of Internet Governance Principle and the Sao Paulo Roadmap have enhanced the existing mechanisms. more

Fiber to the Home: ‘Awesome’ - But What Is Its Purpose?

Two approaches can be taken towards the development of Fiber to the Home (FttH). One is all about its commercial potential - the sale of the most awesome commercial applications in relation to video entertainment, gaming and TV. The other is a perhaps more sophisticated approach - from the perspective of social and economic development. Of course the two are not mutually exclusive. more

Microsoft Disrupts the Zeus Infrastructure

Over the weekend and this morning, Microsoft, working in conjunction with others, issued civil lawsuits to sinkhole numerous domains associated with the Zeus botnet. When I say "botnet", I use the term loosely because Zeus is not a botnet in the sense that Rustock or Waledac is (or was). Rather, Zeus is a tool kit that online criminals can buy that lets them create phishing pages, perform fast fluxing, host drive-by downloads in addition to spamming. It's more like infrastructure than a botnet, although it does have a large botnet under its control. more

Questions and No Answers to US Oversight transition, ICANN’s Role and Future of Internet Governance

Traditionally, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) coordinates the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions, which are key technical services critical to the continued operations of the Domain Name System (DNS)... ICANN has also evolved in its structures to use the 'Multistakeholder Model' in the dissemination of some of its functions and this has seen the creation of working groups and constituencies. more

When a UDRP Panel Infers Bad Faith from An Asking Price

In the Converse.co dispute, a three-member UDRP panel unanimously ordered the transfer of the disputed domain name to the Complainants, All Star C.V. and Converse, Inc., owners of the well-known brand CONVERSE for shoes and apparel. The panel drew the inference that the Respondent, by setting of an asking price of around $300,000 after having acquired the domain name for $306, was primarily motivated by a bad faith intent to target the Complaint. more

Why Do We Accept $10 Security on $1,000,000 Data?

Last week we heard of yet another egregious security breach at an online provider, as crooks made off with the names, address, and birth dates of eBay users, along with encrypted passwords. They suggest you change your password, which is likely a good idea, and you better also change every other place you used the same password. But that's not much help since you can't change your name, address, and birth date, which are ever so handy for phishing and identity theft. more

The Impressive Growth in Global Internet Stats (2011)

The ITU launched its latest statistics report, the World in 2011: ICT Facts and figures, which revealed impressive growth in a number of areas such as global internet use, particularly in developing countries. The report included further key details such as: "One third of the world's population are forecast to be online by the end of 2011..." more

ICANN Doubles Down on Technical Internet Governance Label: What Are the Implications?

Back in September of 2020, ICANN CEO Göran Marby wrote a blog post discussing the implementation of "a common strategy for Internet governance (IG) and technical Internet governance (TIG)", raising the question of whether the ICANN org. intended to pursue this distinction moving forward, as debated in a previous article. This was proven to be the case during the 2020 IGF's Open Forum #44: "ICANN Open Forum - Technical Internet Governance", organized by ICANN itself... more

Trump’s Outrageous ITU Elections Gambit

Every four years, the 168-year-old, Geneva-based treaty organization that provides the legal basis for worldwide network communications, radio spectrum management, and satellite placements holds a "plenipotentiary" conference among its 193 sovereign nation members. The next plenipotentiary begins on 29 October for three weeks. In addition to potentially altering treaty provisions and resolutions, and constituting its Council as an interim governing body, it elects 17 individuals to its five permanent bodies... more

Starlink vs. Kuiper: The Satellite Broadband Race for Space and Subscribers

Strand Consult published an article on its website that makes numerous predictions for broadband and related industries in 2025 and compares them to the company's 2024 predictions. It's fascinating and well worth reading. There is one prediction in particular that got me thinking. In its 2024 predictions, Strand Consult compared Elon Musk's Starlink to Jeff Bezos' Kuiper and said that Bezos had opened a burger bar while Musk runs an interstellar McDonald's. The 2025 observation agrees with that assessment. more