On October 11-12, the fourth Eastern European DNS Forum (EE DNS FORUM 2019) took place in Yerevan, Armenia. The previous forum, EE DNS FORUM 2018, was held in Moscow last year and was hosted by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ. This year, the center was the forum’s silver sponsor, and its experts took an active part in it. The forum in Armenia brought 180 people from various countries together.
On the first day of the forum, the Coordination Center’s Director, Andrey Vorobyev, spoke at the session, “Developments in the DNS Ecosystem – Policy Overview.” He described the center’s work to improve the rules of domain name registration in .RU and .РФ, the current practical work with copyright holders and the ways that national law and international expertise influence the development of rules and policies.
The center’s Head of External Communications Mikhail Anisimov moderated the session on DNS infrastructure security. The session included two parts: the first, “Performance Measurement and Best Practices,” was dedicated to projects and initiatives on measuring DNS performance, supported by ICANN and the region. Alain Durand, ICANN Principal Technologist, and Samaneh Tajalizadehkhoob, ICANN Lead Security, Stability & Resiliency Specialist, spoke about the Identifier Technologies Health Indicator (ITHI) Project and Domain Abuse Activity Reporting. These are the two largest research projects at ICANN, which help understand the situation around domain names better, that identify the main trends and threats and evaluate the effectiveness of different measures taken to prevent them.
Artyom Gavrichenkov from CTO, QRator Labs talked about QRator Labs’ research on internet segment stability and showed that DNS systems were influenced by many factors including coherence, operator interaction and the accessibility of different net segments, which are seldom taken into consideration.
The second part, “DNS Security: Promoting Security as a State of Mind” was on approaches to embedding security measures into everyday operations, or cyber-hygiene. Vladimer Svanadze, Founder and Managing Partner of the Cyber Security Academy (CSA), Georgia, spoke about the methods used by the Georgian Internet Management School to teach users cybersecurity and protection from the biggest threats. Alex Semenyaka, RIPE NCC External Relations Officer and Technical Advisor, described how cyber-hygiene was reflected in operators’ approach and the methods used to prevent threats. He noted that extra knowledge and constant improvement of technical skills were necessary both to regular users and network engineers, and that it was very important to stick to “hygienic” work principles. David Conrad, ICANN CTO, and Robert Adilkhanyan, Head of the Department for Investigation of Cybercrime and High Technology Crimes at the Armenian Investigative Committee’s General Department of Investigation of Particularly Important Cases were the other speakers.
There was also a section on cooperation between ccTLD operators and ICANN. ISOC.AM Board Member Grigori Saghyan gave the presentation, “What are ccTLD registries’ goals and vision?” in which he described the main principles of domain zone management and how ICANN can participate in this. According to Saghyan, in many cases ICANN must participate actively in these processes, because countries often lack the expertise and resources to manage their ccTLDs. He used several island states as an example, because they can benefit from a large international corporation’s help. On the other hand, some countries have a more categorical view and insist that the ccTLD can only be managed by the government.
ICANN Board Member Danko Jevtovic presented ICANN’s position. The other participants representing their ccTLDs, such as Hoster.BY General Director and Founder Sergei Povalishev, Hostmaster.UA Director Oleg Levchenko and Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ Director Andrey Vorobyev, spoke about the best practices of Eastern European domain registries. Andrey Vorobyev said that ccTLDs always note ICANN’s experience and use it in their own projects. For example, in the near future Russia plans to create Data-escrow and EBERO operators, which will comply with all ICANN standards for such organizations working with new TLDs.
He was supported by his Deputy for Legal Issues, Sergei Kopylov, who noted that Russia had a unique system to solve domain disputes, which took into consideration both the demands of Russian law and recommendations developed by WIPO together with ICANN.
