Industry News Summary – Week 9

Recent domain name news from the last week:

UK domain gets DNS Security Protocol protection

Internet registry Nominet has begun introducing DNS Security Extensions, or DNSSEC, a security protocol that should help protect the UK’s domain-name system from malicious misdirections.

On Monday, the company began applying the protocol to the top-level .uk domain. DNSSEC, also known as encrypted DNS, uses digital signatures to guarantee to name servers that the DNS data they receive has not been intercepted or tampered with. In this way, it is meant to help stop hackers who try to redirect traffic from genuine websites to their own spoof websites.

“It’s a very symbolic day for us. It shows we’re very serious about this,” Simon McCalla, director of IT for Nominet, told ZDNet UK. “It’s a step towards creating a safer UK internet.”  Read full article here

Will New Domain Names Take a Step Forward Next Week?

Next week is the highly anticipated ICANN meeting will discuss new top level domain names. Specifically on the table next week will be the “Expressions of Interest” idea for new TLDs. You can read about it many places. But the basic idea is people who want a new TLD will submit an expression of interest in a new TLD, which will give the community an idea of how many — and what kind — of TLDs to expect.  Read full article here

Government to pursue Nominet take-over powers

The government is to push ahead with its efforts to reserve powers to itself to take over the management of the .uk internet domain.

The move comes despite members of industry-owned non-profit organisation Nominet, which is the present registrar, voting for constitutional changes to accommodate the government’s wishes for the body to be more accountable to the public.  Read full article here