News

Source Article : SWITCH

Europe's oldest Web Award is presenting its Honorary Award 2013 to the SWITCH Foundation – and hence to an organisation for the first time rather than to an individual.

At the 'Best of Swiss Web' Award Night being held in the Kongresshaus Zurich next Thursday, 21 March 2013, not only will the best Internet and mobile projects receive awards in front of an audience of 700, but the traditional Honorary Award will also be presented. This prize is generally awarded to persons who have rendered exceptional service to the development of the Internet and the ICT sector, such as through fundamental developments in the technical field or exceptional achievements as an entrepreneur, politician or researcher.

For the 2013 Honorary Award, the jury has selected an organisation for the first time, rather than individuals. This year's Honorary Award is going to the SWITCH Foundation.

Since it was founded on 22 October 1987, SWITCH has been a Swiss Internet pioneer and, for more than 25 years now, a reliable competence centre providing services both to the Swiss universities and to the entire Swiss Internet industry. In the jury's opinion, SWITCH has created excellent conditions for Swiss students, researchers and teachers to be able to work together efficiently and securely. This involves providing the technical basis for internet access and extends right through to taking all the necessary IT security precautions.

SWITCH has also provided valuable services for all companies, organisations and individuals as the registry for all the Internet domain names for Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Added to this come a large number of other services and activities, including the promotion of young Internet talent with the SWITCH Junior Web Award website competition for school classes.

In many areas, SWITCH holds a leading position worldwide, including in identity management and in the fields of high-performance networks and network security. It is thanks to SWITCH that Switzerland's Internet is one of the most secure in the world. In a globally unique anti-malware process, SWITCH informs the operators of infected .ch and .li websites and asks them to remove the malicious code within a period of 24 hours. According to the 2012 annual report of security firm, Panda Security, Switzerland is one of the countries with the fewest infected computers anywhere in the world.

SWITCH has been a dependable and innovative partner throughout the eventful development of the Internet – and one that has stood out through its high quality and sustainability.

The managing directors of SWITCH to date will be taking receipt of the prize on behalf of the Foundation:

- Prof. Dr. Bernhard Plattner (first managing director)
- Peter Gilli (managing director from 1988 to 1995)
- Thomas Brunner (managing director from 2001 to 2012)
- Dr. Andreas Dudler (managing director since May 2012)

Previous 'Best of Swiss Web' Commendation Prizes have been awarded to: 

• 2007: Dr. Fulvio Caccia (former director of ComCom ) 
• 2008: David Nüscheler (CTO Day AG)
• 2009: Christian Wanner (CEO LeShop)
• 2010: Robert Cailliau (co-inventor WWW, CERN)
• 2011: Marc Bürki and Paolo Buzzi (founders of Swissquote)
• 2012: Prof. em, Dr. Beat Schmid (founder of IWI, St. Gallen University)

CENTR last week concluded its 49th General Assembly in Lisbon, Portugal. 
The meeting was hosted by FCCN (Registry for .PT) with around 70 participants representing some 35 Registry operators in attendance.  

Main topics over the 2 days included;

• WTPF panel discussion
• Security incidents/issues from Registry operators
• Impacts of new gTLDs
• Results of an in depth ZookStudy on domain names
• ICANN update
• CENTR working group updates and organisational matters

Article Source: NORID

A recent survey done by Sentio, on Norid's request, shows that the Norwegian top-level domain – .no – has a strong position among Norwegian businesses and among the public in general. When asking businesses with more than one domain name to point to their primary domain, an impressive 80 percent answer that the Norwegian domain is their main name. The gTLD .com is the biggest competitor to .no, and 10 percent of the businesses use their .com domain as their primary address.

Quality and Norwegian identity

Most of the survey participants state that .no is the most recognizable top-level domain in Norway, and support the local presence requirement for Norwegian domain name holders.

When asked how they assess the qualities of .no and .com, it appears that .no is seen as more reliable than .com in areas like technical stability, security for online shopping and that the address does in fact belong to the entity listed as domain name holder.

An audit by the Norwegian Post- and Telecommunications Authority confirms that Norid is well ahead in advancing the robustness and the security for the domain infrastructure in Norway.

Strong position vs new competitors

More than one thousand new top-level domains are on their way onto the global domain market. This will lead to increased competition for the established top-level domains, including the Norwegian one. This user survey suggests that .no is well equipped to meet the competition from new parties.

Domain names continue to be relevant

Almost all Norwegian businesses have their own domain name that they use for websites and email, and they view their domain name as important to branding, both for the business itself and for products and services. Some believe that social media will replace some of the need for a separate domain name, but most people doubt that domain names will be less relevant in the future.

Hilde Thunem, managing director of Norid, is very pleased that domain names remain solid in the mind of the public. – It is important to us that .no is useful to our society, and meets the public's needs. This survey confirms that we are still the first and primary choice both for Norwegian businesses, and the public in general, Thunem says.

Article source: SIDN

For SIDN, a reliable DNS is an absolute priority. Our DNS engineers, Unix managers and network managers are therefore working constantly to maintain and improve the availability of the .nl name server infrastructure. However, it is increasingly common for domain nameservers, such as the .nl servers, to be the targets of internet criminals. 

Redundant DNS environment
In order to assure the continued reliability of the .nl domain, all our DNS servers have in recent years been replaced by systems with redundancy in almost all critical physical and functional components in the DNS environment. We also have a configuration management system, which ensures that all systems perform exactly as specified in the design. Furthermore, 24x7 monitoring and detailed log analysis enable us to respond quickly to every service delivery issue. 

Abuse
Since last year, however, we have observed increasingly frequent attempts to abuse our DNS servers. The incidents have involved various types of attack, sometimes targeting our systems, but more often aimed at using our systems in DDoS and/or amplification attacks. Such attacks involve a third party being overwhelmed by a volume of traffic that they are not expecting. In other words, criminals have been trying to use the .nl name servers to interfere with the services of third parties. Like other registries and DNS providers, we have therefore been obliged to take steps to address the abuse. 

Bandwidth
Since the middle of 2012, we have sought to limit the impact of such attacks by eliminating the malicious traffic from the data flow. Instead of answering every DNS query, we first check whether it is legitimate. The reason being that non-legitimate queries are often submitted simply to use up bandwidth, so that it isn't available for service provision. By deliberate over-provisioning of the infrastructure, it is possible to manage the consequences of the attacks.

Ineffective attacks
Our abuse-prevention measures have had a positive effect: the number of attempted attacks on our servers has fallen sharply, because they no longer have any effect. Our systems can't be used for the malicious purposes described above any more, so the criminals have shifted their attention to less secure systems.

100% uptime
Of course, internet criminals don't stand still: new forms of attack are being invented all the time. For many years, SIDN's DNS service has boasted 100% uptime, and naturally we want to keep that record up. We therefore work tirelessly to enhance our processes, working methods and infrastructure. And thus to stay one step ahead of the criminals.

Estonian Internet Foundation  have upgraded the .ee WHOIS domain search service, which will now also return domain outzoning date (i.e. the date when the domain became unavailable on the Internet) and delete date from the registry.

The consultation is being conducted using the ICANN Public Comment Process, consistent with the contract requirements. The feedback received during this consultation will inform the Root Zone Management Partners on the subject of KSK rollover, so that a schedule and a detailed implementation plan for KSK rollovers can be established.

More information here 
 

Beginning 23rd of February 2013, a new .RO domain name registration service has been put into service. This allows real time domain registration through the EPP and REST protocols.

New features have also been added to increase the security level of the domains management services, the registrar control panel and control panel for domain owners.

Read further information on these changes including important information for Registrars

The latest issue of .eu Identity is now available in the .eu registry’s free magazine app on the Apple iTunes® and Google Play stores.

In this issue
Digital strategist, William Deckers, reveals five unique advantages that Internet businesses have over their brick-and-mortar counterparts. And content expert, Anna Borsboom, gives us insights into Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and how you can use it to increase your website’s visibility.

We take a look behind the scenes of TEDxBrussels to see what goes into organising this annual ideas-exchange event, which brings together thought-leaders from a variety of industries to share, inspire, innovate and effect change.

NIC.at have published their ".at Report" looking at latest statistics on ownership and use of .at domains, environmental factors that influence the registration statistics as well as internet and broadband developments in Austria. 

"the better the underlying technologies, the more domains are registered" 

Click to access report