The 53rd CENTR Administrative workshop, a meeting of the Council of European National TLD Registries on the management and development of ccTLDs, held online on October 7-8, brought together over 60 representatives from 27 registries that are CENTR members. Specialists from the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ took part in the event.
The meeting opened with a roundtable discussion where the participants shared the main trends in their domain zones and presented new projects and promising research.
Registries now place a lot of emphasis on projects concerning the quality of registration data. They launch various processes to verify that registrant details are accurate and relevant. They develop programs for the early detection and prevention of possible DNS abuse. Many European registries are introducing or continuing to develop a “Registry Lock” service that provides additional security protection for domain data against unauthorized changes, theft or deletions.
Svetlana Lobanova, Project Manager at the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, informed those at the roundtable discussion about the latest events and the Coordination Center’s new projects.
She talked about the DATA ESCROW service, which went online in March 2021, as well as the Emergency Back-end Registry Operators (EBERO) system in .RU and .РФ, also introduced this year. MSK-IX is a partner of both projects. Svetlana Lobanova also mentioned current projects such as the monitoring of “corona-domains,” and the effort to verify the quality of registrant details, as well as other projects.
On the second day of the meeting, the participants shared their experiences with their new projects. Representatives from the .DE registry talked about their new project, vChecked. It involves the voluntary verification of domain registrant data by the registrar. Registrants who have completed this verification can place an icon on their website (for example, an online store) that certifies and confirms that the site is not fraudulent and users can trust it. Registries also discussed the possible classification of registrar business models and the use of the classifications developed by the RRDG, organized by CENTR, and other topics.
The next, 54th CENTR Administrative workshop is scheduled for February 2022, and the organizers hope to hold it in person in Barcelona.
