Architelos Publishes Second NameSentry Report, Releasing Data and Key Findings on Internet Safety and Comparative Rankings of over 70 TLDs

“We hope greater transparency will encourage debate and open dialogue to leverage collective wisdom on best practices to combat abuse”

Report Finds Increase of “Abusive Domains” and Potential Lessons for New gTLDs

The findings indicate 67% increase of domain names identified and listed as “abusive” by major security blocklists from January to September 2013. These respected blocklists are used to protect Internet users by blocking malware, phishing, dangerous spam, and other threats. The majority of the domains on these blocklists were registered for the purpose of perpetrating abuse, with a small minority consisting of domains that were compromised by bad actors. From January to September of 2013, an estimated 5.5% of newly registered domains were listed. “This underscores prevalent practice of bad actors to use domain names for perpetrating security threats and then quickly moving to new ones,” said John Matson, COO of Architelos. “The increase in abusive use of domains is a challenge for the security and domain industries, and for the general Internet-using population.”

The first NameSentry Report covered January to May 2013, was released in July  and pioneered the concept of the Namespace Quality Index (NQI). NQI measures the relative concentration of abusive domain names in any given namespace, thus providing a comparative measure of safety. Specifically, the NQI measures the “number of reported abusive domain names/million Domains Under Management (DUM).” Taking a snapshot in May and then again in September, of the 15 TLDs with NQI ratings of “Excellent/Green” in the May, only 6% or four TLDs sustained their ranking by September, while the rest slipped to “Good/Yellow.” This demonstrates the challenge TLDs face to achieve and maintain an “Excellent/Green” rating. The number of “Good/Yellow” rated TLDs increased from 36 in number in May to 45 total in September and represented 63% or the majority of the 72 TLD studied. The number of “Caution/Orange”-rated TLDs increased slightly in number from 14 in May to 15 total in September; and the number of at “Risk/Red” rated TLDs increased slightly from 7 in May to 8 in September comprising 11% of all measured TLDs. The NameSentry Namespace Quality Report is available for download at www.architelos.com/namesentry.

Starting now and continuing through next year and beyond, more than 1,000 new gTLDs will be added to the Internet root. Architelos’ goal in publishing the NQI data and the resulting analytical findings, is to bring greater transparency to the domain name industry and the Internet in general, regarding the prevalence of security threats such as       malware, phishing, botnets and spam which start with a domain name registration and depend on that domain name to perpetrate their harm. “We hope greater transparency will encourage debate and open dialogue to leverage collective wisdom on best practices to combat abuse,” said Alexa Raad, CEO of Architelos.

About Architelos, Inc.

Architelos, Inc. provides SaaS-based TLD managed services solutions, and strategic consulting for clients in the domain name (DNS) industry. NameSentry℠, a patent-pending abuse detection and mitigation service, is the second SaaS based service launched by the company, after Business Case Builder in 2011. Architelos is unique in having over 30 years of experience in building, launching, and managing multi-million name gTLDs. Clients include new gTLDs, as well as existing generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) and Country Code (ccTLD) registries. Architelos has locations in Leesburg (VA), Los Angeles, (CA), Toronto (Canada) and Dublin (Ireland), as well as data centers in Toronto and Los Angeles. For more info follow Architelos on Twitter and Facebook or LinkedIn

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