CENTR Jamboree 2019 was held in Amsterdam (Netherlands) on May 27-29. It involved over 200 experts and specialists representing national TLD registries that are members of the Council of European National TLD Registries (CENTR). For three days, the participants exchanged experience and new ideas at seminars on technical and legal issues, as well as security and marketing.
Coordination Center experts take part regularly in CENTR Jamboree conferences and speak at sessions and roundtable discussions on the work carried out by the Coordination Center for the development and growth of the Russian national domains, .RU and .РФ.
The first day included a workshop on administrative issues, where the participants exchanged current news of registries related to operational activities. The Coordination Center’s project manager Svetlana Lobanova spoke on the center’s latest news, projects and plans. The participants were interested in a project to improve the accuracy of the identification data of domain name registrants. In addition, Svetlana Lobanova presented the updated online service Domains and Trademarks, which the Coordination Center is developing together with the Online Patent company.
The center’s senior legal adviser Inna Kugusheva answered questions from the participants concerning the law on sovereign RuNet, which will come into force in November 2019. The law proposes the creation of an independent infrastructure for the reliable functioning of the internet in Russia in case of threats or cyber-attacks. The conference participants wondered how this approach would influence the development of Russian national domains. Inna Kugusheva explained that, for the Coordination Center as the registry of the .RU and .РФ domains, this law is noteworthy because the status of the operator of the Russian domain zones would be fixed at the legislative level. The law reflects provisions that the activities of the Russian national domain zone are coordinated by a non-profit organization with the Russian Federation among its founders, and which is the registered owner of the databases of this zone in international organizations for the allocation of network addresses and domain names.
On the second day of the conference, the main topic was the creation of a space of trust on the internet. The participants talked about E-identification, how to detect and respond to cyber-threats, and how to maintain user confidence in national domain registries.
“Users had the opportunity to choose among a variety of top-level domains, and competition among domain zones is increasing. However, national domains continue to be a natural choice for many. I believe this is due to a little more confidence in websites in local ccTLDs. Therefore, more and more registries are aware of the value of this trust and are trying to strengthen it – and to take an active part in combating network abuse,” Olga Baskakova, the center’s project manager, said.
The conference participants noted that an increasing number of organizations provide so-called domain reputation services, which are used to assess and predict a possible threat to the security of domain names. Some of the most prominent threat intelligence services are represented by long-established initiatives, such as the Antifishing Working Group and SpamHaus. New initiatives, like the Web of Trust, the Malware Patrol and the WIPO-supported White Bullet, are becoming increasingly popular.
Taken together, these channels can have a significant impact on the DNS and thereby increase the expectations of users, which may want national domain registries to take actions that go beyond the established service conditions. Timely detection of threats and rapid response are priority areas for registries in order to create a space of trust within national zones.
Also on the second day of CENTR Jamboree 2019, time was given to identification services, which are now gaining in popularity, and the Registry Lock service, which is provided by many national domain registries, but is not yet attracting interest from registrars and users.
The participants stressed the importance of increasing user awareness of the possibilities of the Registry Lock service, as well as the need to unify the service for all registries. To this end, an ad hoc working group to develop this service was created within the IETF.
On the final day of the conference at the roundtable discussion, where marketing national registries was discussed, Olga Baskakova spoke about the latest initiatives of the Coordination Center: celebrating the 25th anniversary of the .RU domain, creating the Universal Acceptance Regional Coordination Group for the CIS and Eastern Europe, shooting the video “Internet for all,” conducting the Digital Dictation and many other things.
In 2018, the CENTR Jamboree 2018 conference took place in Moscow for the first time and was hosted by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ. The capital of Russia hosted over 150 representatives of the national domain registries that are members of CENTR from European countries, as well as from Japan, Canada and New Zealand. One of the most relevant topics at the 2018 conference was the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which entered into force on May 25, 2018 and had a significant impact on everyone in the domain market.
