Goldstein Report

Tag: salzburg

  • European ccTLD Registries Address Security Issues With ISO27001: CENTR News

    European ccTLD Registries Address Security Issues With ISO27001: CENTR News

    CENTR small logoSecurity is an ongoing issue for the domain name system and TLD registries are at the forefront of dealing with it.

    So in 2011 CENTR, on its members’ request, created a Security Working Group for ccTLDs to share security best practices and discuss ways to mitigate security risks, the latest CENTR News highlights.

    At a recent workshop in Brussels and for the second time a workshop was dedicated to one topic only, the ISO 27001 security standard.

    “Over the past few years I got a lot of questions from colleagues from other ccTLDs about ISO 27001,” Bert ten Brinke, Security Officer with SIDN, Chair of the CENTR Security working group and expert in the field of ISO 27001 told CENTR News. “After a short inventory, the idea was born to organise a workshop completely focused on ISO 27001.”

    “ISO forces you to build a process to deal with security risks within and around your organisation and its core tasks,” reported CENTR News. “When everyone involved starts to operate according to this process an organisation’s security will become less dependent on individual employees. Bert ten Brinke feels this is the main reason why ISO 27001 increases the chance of a better secured registry.”

    “There are alternative standards that can be useful for ccTLDs and it’s of course possible to build your own processes follow your own standards. But by doing so, you’ll risk having to explain your standard over and over again. Official standards don’t have that issue. They are already accepted and used by a whole community.

    “For companies there are a lot of security standards which can be used. Examples are: the American COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology), which is an IT governance framework that addresses every aspect of IT and the originally British ISO 27001(International Organization for Standardization). COBIT lays more focus on Risk Management and following Bert ten Brinke it is more difficult to implement than the ISO27001 standard.”

    “It is important to build a standard according to your organisation and not the other way around”. This is Bert’s main advice for ccTLDs that are considering implementing systematic security processes by means of an official standard. Furthermore, in order to start implementing security processes in a successful way the full support of the CEO or Managing Director is crucial.

    “An ISO certificate is an engagement for the future. When you are certified ISO27001 for the first time this is only the beginning. Each year you have to proof that you are ‘worth’ the certificate and after three years, you have to recertify. For most companies it’s a never ending circle of security improvement.

    On registry to recently acquire ISO27001 certification was nic.at, the registry for .at domain names. The announcement was made at the recent Domain Pulse conference held in Salzburg, Austria, and Richard Wein, General Manager, said the certification was proof of the registry’s dedication to security of .at domain names.

    Elsewhere in the February 2014 edition of CENTR News, there are articles on CENTR preparations for the next Internet Governance Forum meeting to be held in Istanbul in September. Plus an update on DNSSEC in Europe, which shows there are two-thirds (67%) of registries that have implemented the security standard and a quarter (26%) planning its implementation, which are the findings of a survey of 26 ccTLD registries.

    Plus there is a Q&A with Nominet Brand Manager Becky Bradburn and a European ccTLD update.

    To download the latest CENTR News, go to https://centr.org/news/european-cctld-news-february-2014.

  • Domain Pulse 2014: Is There A Domain Aftermarket For New gTLDs?

    Domain Pulse conference logoThe domain name aftermarket players are looking curiously as to whether money can be made from new gTLDs. But Sedo, the largest domain name marketplace, is confident money can be made, and Tobias Flaitz, CEO of Sedo, explained why at the Domain Pulse conference last Thursday.

    While he doesn’t give a definitive response, Flaitz said “the chances are good to make money from new gTLDs” in front of the 300 delegates at the annual conference hosted by the German, Swiss and this year Austrian registries.

    For new gTLDs to be successful though, Flaitz said they will have to make their way into the user’s behavioural mind, which will take time and effort. Flaitz believes that in five years new gTLDs will become a part of daily online life.

    For now though, the market doesn’t know enough about new gTLDs and how to use them, and there will be some hesitation by some in whether they should be used.

    But for now initial sales in some of the new gTLDs to come to market are good. And Flaitz gave some examples of why the aftermarket is promising.

    At the time of his presentation, the average sales price was €720 per domain in sunrise auctions. And there is plenty of interest in at least some of the new gTLDs with 93,876 domains registered in 14 gTLDs in the first ten days. An average registration fee of approximately US$35 means there were registrations generating $3.4 million in annual fees after these ten days.

    The most popular new gTLD when it comes to registrations was .guru, with 32,751 registrations in the ten days (including in their case registrations during the Sunrise period). The second most popular was .photography with 15,519 (while .camera only received 1,931), followed by .bike (7,037), .clothing (6,655), .gallery (4,761), .singles (4,674), .estate (4,072) and .ventures (3,319) making up the top ten of the 14 new gTLDs launched at 5 February.

    And there have been some promising premium sales in these early days with mad.bike sold two days after registration for €500 and findme.singles sold for €2000 four days after registration. And of those new gTLD names sold through Sedo, there was an average price of €1,324.

    Earlier in the day, Dirk Krischenowski of dotBERLIN, applicant for .berlin outlined how the Trademark Clearinghouse was an expensive and complicated way for brand owners to protect their brands in new gTLDs.

    Registering with the TMCH is a precondition of being able to register a domain in a new gTLD during a Sunrise phase. And while Flaitz said this a small number of the world’s trademarks, he did show how registrations in the TMCH were accelerating with 23,024 marks currently submitted, and over 5,000 in January alone, which is around double the amount of as recently as September.

    Maybe from little things big things grow!

  • Domain Pulse 2014: After Application Debacles, .BERLIN Ready To Rumble

    Applicants for new gTLDs have faced a few hurdles to not just get their applications submitted, but also processed and implemented.First there was the “glitch” that halted for a few months the TLD Application System (TAS) for applications for new gTLDs, then the fiasco of the Digital Archery process to determine the order in which applications would be processed and most recently an expensive and then a complicated Trademark Clearinghouse for brand owners to protect their brands in new gTLD.These were the hurdles Dirk Krischenowski of dotBERLIN, applicant for .berlin, described that new gTLD applicants faced at the Domain Pulse conference in the Austrian city of Salzburg in front of over 300 attendees attending the annual two day conference, this year hosted by the Austrian (.at) registry nic.at. The conference rotates between Germany (.de), Switzerland (.ch) and Austria.But .berlin has overcome these hurdles and is ready to rumble with its General Availability due to commence on 18 March. It is also the world’s first cityTLD to accept registrations.Krischenowski also compared the launches of other TLDs to get an idea of how they evolved over their first year. Looking at .asia, .co, .tel and .xxx he found that at the end of the first month, all of them consistently had around 45 percent of their registrations they at the end of the first year of operation, and that growth rates as a proportion of their current registrations grew very consistently across the four TLDs in the first year.Having overcome their hurdles, .berlin and other applicants that also spoke on a new gTLD panel outlined how they are moving forward to implement their gTLDs with new opportunities for marketing and branding being important in their implementation.The European travel agency Tui said that while they were initially focussed on getting the gTLD instead of the New Zealand brewery of the same name, now they are looking at a vision for the brand under .tui.Alexander Bialas from TUI AG said strategic options for the future are being considered. He also gave examples of some of the ways in which Tui will use their TLD with plans to create destination domains to promote destinations with information on activities, events and eating, for example, as well as direct access to social media (facebook.tui and twitter.tui) so people don’t have to leave the Tui online world.Another with a view to increasing brand awareness was .tirol. Markus Kichl, CEO of .tirol said the Austrian region wanted to enhance tourism and make businesses easier to find in the region.Dirk Hamm, Founder and CEO of Valuetainment, the applicant for .voting spoke of how they plan to introduce .voting and use it as a mechanism to enable voter initiatives and online voting, with tools to be available to make voting on a registrant’s website easy to implement.And Ulrich Retzlaff from the Public Interest Registry, who has applied for .ngo and .ong spoke of how PIR is wanting to give the 10 million non-governmental organisations around the world an opportunity to market themselves, and provide better opportunities for fundraising.Earlier in the day, Sally Costerton, Senior Advisor to ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé, spoke of the importance of an open internet. Its importance was underlined by a recent Boston Consulting Group report that said in 2018, the global online economy will be worth $4.2 trillion, up from $2.3t in 2010.But implementing an internet that is free of walls and silos that stifle innovation and take advantage of the opportunities online, information must be accessible, Costerton said.Costerton also implored attendees to get involved. “Business can make a difference,” she told delegates, “as governments listen” and that the “influence business has on their national government is extremely disproportionate.” To help with influencing governement, Costerton said ICANN will help business to reach out to their governments.”We owe it to the next billion people to keep the internet open and free and frictionless,” she concluded.