Left to right: Secretary DIT & Chairman NIXI Mr. Shashi Kant Sharma; CEO, NIXI Mr. Ravi Shanker; Afilias Executive VP Ram Mohan; and Afilias SVP and Chief Marketing Officer Roland LaPlanteDeployment of Domain Name System Security Extensions Enhances global security for India

Afilias, a global provider of Internet infrastructure services, today announced that it has enabled Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) for the .IN country code top-level domain (TLD) for the country of India, improving global security for this domain which houses over 700,000 .IN domains. .IN was officially signed on November 4, 2010 and its Delegation Signer (DS) records are expected to be entered into the DNS Root by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) shortly, allowing the .IN zone to be validated using DNSSEC.

“Afilias has been a leader in DNSSEC deployment, and is proud to provide this state-of—the-art level of security for the .IN domain,” said Ram Mohan, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Afilias. “Afilias has now secured more top-level domains with DNSSEC than any other registry provider. DNSSEC is a critical step forward for India and serves as a foundation to ensure that the .IN TLD remains among the most secure domains in the world.”

DNSSEC protects the DNS from cache poisoning exploits which can allow malicious entities to intercept an Internet users’ request to access a website, and redirect or eavesdrop on the user without their knowledge, and with no ability to reassert control. DNSSEC introduces digital signatures to the DNS infrastructure and automatically ensures that users are not hijacked and taken to an unintended destination.

“Security is a key priority for India and we are pleased to be among the leaders taking the initiative to support the adoption of DNSSEC,” said Mr. Ravi Shanker, Chief Executive Officer for the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), the .IN registry operator. “Our efforts in working with Afilias to improve .IN’s security illustrate our commitment to enhance India’s sovereign space on the Web and improve the value it provides to Internet users around the world.”

Afilias completed the largest registry DNSSEC deployment on behalf of the Public Interest Registry when it enabled DNSSEC for .ORG in 2009-2010. The signing of the .IN domain represents the tenth top-level domain (TLD) that Afilias has secured with DNSSEC. These signing efforts are part of Afilias’ “Project Safeguard” initiative, which will rollout DNSSEC across its registry and DNS platforms.

Once the DS records are entered into the root, Afilias will activate a “friends and family” period that will allow the public to gain experience with a select group of .IN second level domain names that have also been signed.