In its second quarter 2011 earnings call, Verisign announced that Mark McLaughlin has submitted his resignation to become the CEO of a private company. His last day with the company will be August 25, 2011. Mark concluded his board service at the regularly scheduled board of directors meeting on July 27, 2011 and resigned as president and chief executive officer effective August 1, 2011. Jim Bidzos, Verisign's founder and previous CEO, will become the president and chief executive officer effective August 1, 2011. more
ICM Registry announced this week it has struck a deal with McAfee for a free malware scan for every .XXX domain. The deal would include McAfee's "trustmark" and date stamp, ICM said. Every .XXX domain will be scanned for vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, browser exploits and phishing sites, reputational analysis and malware, Stuart Lawley, CEO of ICM Registry, said in a statement. more
The latest Domain Name Industry Brief published by Verisign reports 4.5 million domain names were added to the Internet in the first three months of 2011. According to the report, the first quarter of 2011 closed with a base of more than 209.8 million domain name registrations across all Top Level Domains (TLDs), or a 2.2 percent increase over the fourth quarter of 2010. Registrations grew by 15.3 million, or 7.9 percent year over year. more
UK registry Nominet has enabled the deployment of domain name system security extensions (DNSSEC) for 9.4 million second level .uk domains. Completing the rollout represents over a year's work and marks an important milestone in making the web a more trusted environment for UK consumers and businesses, says Nominet, which is responsible for running the .uk internet infrastructure. more
VeriSign reports that it has reached a Settlement Agreement and Mutual Release with the Coalition for ICANN Transparency, Inc. ("CFIT"), CFIT's members, and specified related parties that resolves the over five-year long CFIT litigation. Under the terms of the Agreement, no payment will be made and the parties immediately will file a dismissal with prejudice of all claims in the litigation. Further, the parties executed mutual releases from all claims now and in the future related to the litigation. more
NameSmash has interviewed Garth Bruen, Internet security expert and creator of Knujon, on some key issues under discussion during the recent ICANN meetings in San Francisco. Topics include Whois, DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) and generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) -- issues of critical importance particularly with ICANN's expected roll-out of thousands of new gTLDs in the coming years. more
DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) has been deployed for .COM, Internet's largest domain extension with more than 90 million registrations. The announced was made today by VeriSign, the registry operator for .COM. more
Kevin Murphy reporting in DomainIncite: "Japanese electronics giant Hitachi has emerged as the second big consumer brand to officially announce it will apply for a '.brand' top-level domain. GMO Registry, also based in Japan, is the company's back-end provider of choice, according to this news release..." more
Michele Neylon writes: "Earlier this morning ICANN made public the resolutions from the most recent board meeting of November 5th 2010. The meeting was not a "normal" meeting - it was deemed a "special meeting" and its sole topic was vertical integration and cross-ownership between registrars and registries. This topic, often simply referred to as VI, has been a subject of debate - often very heated - for the last 12 months." more
.ORG, The Public Interest Registry (PIR) has announced today the launch of a new campaign aimed at educating IT professionals about securing DNS and the adoption of Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC). The key purpose of the "Practice Safe DNS" website, according to PIR, is to "serve as a key resource for domain holders, registrars, web developers and IT professionals to learn how they can respectively play a increasingly relevant role in providing a safer and more secure Internet." more
The one-page link shortening service provider, vb.ly, has been seized with no apparent warning by the Libyan government which manages the ".ly" county code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD). According to reports, Nic.ly, the registry operator of the ccTLD in Libya informed the user of the domain that the content of its website was considered offensive, obscene and illegal by the Libyan Islamic Sharia Law and therefore revoked. more
Brian Krebs reporting in Krebs on Secruity: "The Obama administration is inviting leaders of the top Internet domain name registrars and registries to attend a three-hour meeting at the White House next month about voluntary ways to crack down on Web sites that are selling counterfeit prescription medications..." more
A report, released today by McAfee, Inc., titled "Security Takes the Offensive," says that traditionally, security technology companies and computer users have taken a defensive posture, putting the cyber equivalent of body armor on computers, networks and in the cloud. The report's authors say it is now time to avoid enemy strikes altogether by taking a more aggressive stance, aligning forces and involving law enforcement. more
The board of ICANN on Friday gave initial approval for the addition of .xxx Top-Level Domain... Dot-XXX domains won't start appearing right away. ICANN must first conduct a "due diligence" study of ICM's business plan for the domain, and then the board will review the contract proposed for the operation of the domain. That may involve referring the matter to ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee, which is next scheduled to meet in December in Colombia, said board member Bruce Tonkin. "There is a potential that this is a prolonged process,"... more
Symantec today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire VeriSign's identity and authentication business, which includes the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate Services, the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Services, the VeriSign Trust Services and the VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP) Authentication Service. more
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