Why OIRA Needs to Coordinate Federal Cyber Security Regulation

Two quick facts about American industry's resilience against cyber-attack, (1) our critical infrastructure is inadequately protected and (2) federal regulation will be required to fix the problem, reliance on market forces alone will not be sufficient irrespective of whether or not Sony Pictures survives. Although regulation is needed, it needs to be coordinated and, above all, cost-effective. Which agency is charge of regulating cybersecurity? Right now, it's a free for all with agencies staking out turf and claims of authority. more

Symantec Chosen as Verification Agent for .bank and .insurance TLDs

fTLD Registry Services, LLC has announced an agreement with Symantec Corporation to provide verification services for the ".bank" and ".insurance" generic top-level domains. According to the report, Symantec will be responsible for adding a layer of protection to the new domains by verifying the eligibility of companies requesting domain names, making sure the person requesting the domain name is authorized by the company and ensuring the name requested by the company complies with fTLD's policies. more

Most of the Time Common Sense Eventually Prevails

I have learned that lesson many times over. In many of the issues that we are facing, as a society or in our industry, I am reasonably confident that common sense will eventually prevail. Sometimes the road twists and turns, but in the end water flows around rocks. In our industry I can refer to developments we have been advocating for (structural separation, utilities-based telecoms infrastructure, broadband for social and economic benefits, ICT-based industry and sector transformation, FttH, internet as a tool for more direct democracies, etc). more

Internet Society Seeks Nominations for Board of Trustees

Are you passionate about preserving the global, open Internet? Do you have experience in Internet standards, development or public policy? If so, please consider applying for one of the open seats on the Internet Society Board of Trustees. The Internet Society serves a pivotal role in the world as a leader on Internet policy, technical, economic, and social matters, and as the organizational home of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). more

DNSSEC Adoption Part 3: A Five Day Hole in Online Security

Implementing security requires attention to detail. Integrating security services with applications where neither the security service nor the application consider their counterpart in their design sometimes make plain that a fundamental change in existing practices is needed. Existing "standard" registrar business practices require revision before the benefits of the secure infrastructure foundation DNSSEC offers can be realized. more

IAB Issues Statement on NETmundial Initiative, Says Will Not Participate

Internet Architecture Board issued a statement today announcing that it will not participate in NETmundial Initiative for reasons also expressed by others. Full statement included. more

What’s With the 32-Bit Numbers That the Internet Keeps Defying?

By now you might have read the news "How 'Gangnam Style' Broke YouTube?" What happened is that a YouTube video named 'Gangnam Style' by a South Korean singer Park Jae-sang, known by his stage name PSY, has been viewed so many times that it broke YouTube's view counter. YouTube's view counter is built on a 32-bit integer, which provides a view-tracking capability of nearly 2.15 billion views. more

Bulk Sunrise Period for Special Collision List Starts Next Week

The first 12 domain registries have been scheduled for the first special Sunrise Period mandated by ICANN for trademarks on the blocked collision lists. A total of 328 new domain extensions have launched so far in 2014. Each one of these has its own unique collision list of names that were found to be already in use on private computer networks. Some of these lists have over 100,000 names. All of these registries were required to block these names from being allocated until a policy for their allocation could be developed by ICANN. more

Total Domains Reach 280 Million Worldwide

The second quarter of 2014 closed with a base of 280 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs) -- an increase of four million domain names or 1.4 percent over the first quarter of 2014 -- according to Verisign in its latest issue Domain Name Industry Brief. Registrations have grown by 18.6 million, or 7.2 percent, year over year. more

Four Critical IT Elements for a More Productive Business

IT is now a boardroom discussion. Beyond troubleshooting server issues and maintaining network security, IT initiatives must provide company-wide ROI and work in unison with other department objectives. But the link between corporate efficiency and technology spending isn't always obvious -- here are four critical IT elements your business needs to improve productivity. more

ICANN, .nyc, and Multistakeholder Innovation (Video)

On Monday November 24 2014 ICANN President and CEO Fadi Chehadé met with NYC community at the office of Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer. Present were representatives of ISOC-NY, Connecting .nyc, New York Tech Meetup, Meetup, NameSpace, Access, and Google. The discussions were partly about NYC's own new TLD and partly about general ICANN issues. more

Are You Playing Roulette With Your Network Upgrades?

Exponential growth in network bandwidth requirements has created a need for large CAPEX investments for most service providers. Unfortunately, each provider faces limits on all expenditures and must upgrade only what is needed, when it is needed. Nobody should waste time or money by performing unnecessary network upgrades. To avoid needless upgrading, providers must have all the data they can get from their network to guide them through the decision-making process.  more

Everyone Can Participate in ICANN Decisions ? Come On…

I participated in the French RINDD last week in Paris: RINDD stands for "Rencontres Internationales des Noms de Domaine". The translation would be "The International Domain Name Conference". This event is organized once a year by SafeBrands, a French Registrar. Many participants were there: the ICANN, Law Firms, Donuts, other new gTLD applicants, back-end Registries and many experts. more

Uncivil Society: The NETmund*al *n*t*at*ve’s Missing I’s

When I last wrote about the NETmundial Initiative (NMI) project developed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in conjunction with ICANN it was noted that its August 28th announcement event "ended with significant dissent from the broad groups comprising "civil society", and only lukewarm support from the business sector". Indeed, during the concluding session on that late summer day, "NTIA head Larry Strickling appeared to startle the participants when he intervened to observe that perhaps the event was over-engineered... more

A Survey of Internet Users from 24 Countries Finds 83% Consider Affordable Access Basic Human Right

A survey of Internet users in 24 countries has found that 83% believe affordable access to the Internet should be a basic human right, according to the "CIGI-Ipsos Global Survey on Internet Security and Trust." The results of the new survey, commissioned by the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and conducted by global research company Ipsos, were presented today in Ottawa, Canada. more