Joint Stock Company MSK-IX has begun to provide data escrow agent services, in pilot mode, for registrars to deposit a copy of their electronic database in Russia’s country-code TLDs .RU and .РФ.
Registrar Data Escrow implementation is aimed at providing additional information security on the data contained in registrar databases, to protect the stability and security of the DNS and also to protect registrants’ rights in case the main registry operator’s system malfunctions.
The Russian Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media initiated a project last year to introduce additional organizational and technical measures aimed at ensuring the integrity of the DNS, as well as to provide additional protection for registrants’ and domain name users’ rights. The plan is to introduce mechanisms, on a Russian platform, to provide additional DNS data security guarantees and ensure the smooth operation of the DNS as a whole.
Registrar Data Escrow is mandatory for generic top-level domain (gTLD) registries. Although this requirement is not mandatory for country code domains, the practice of using this tool has shown good results, so extending it to national domains should provide additional guarantees for the stable operation of .RU and .РФ domains.
For reference – a trilateral Memorandum of Cooperation was signed in 2018 between the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media, the ANO Coordination Center for the National Domain of the Internet, and Rostelecom to ensure the sustainable operations of the registration system and the DNS system in ccTLD .RU and .РФ. According to the Memorandum, one of the main goals of this cooperation is to ensure the technical and technological functioning of the DNS in .RU and .РФ in accordance with international standards. This means, among other things, Registrar Data Escrow implementation.
