The Conference brought together more than 130 experts at the Marriott Hotel in Minsk, and another 900 people joined online.
The Conference program included 6 working sessions, addressed by more than 40 speakers. Over two days, the participants discussed many key issues, exchanged knowledge and experience, and outlined important plans for the future.
The focus of the TLDCON 2024 participants was on issues of reliability and security of the Runet and other national network segments, regulation of SSL certificates, development of the Internet governance system and regulation of the Internet space, as well as the launch of the second stage of the New gTLD program.
The event was opened by the Director of the Coordination Center Andrey Vorobyev, who emphasized the business and friendly relations with colleagues from Belarus:
“We are pleased to hold our Conference on Belarusian soil. We have long-standing warm relations, and our national domains are the same age: in 2024, the Russian .RU and Belarusian .BY turned 30 years old. We also congratulate the national domains of Armenia (.AM) and Kazakhstan (.KZ), whose representatives gathered in Minsk today, on the 30th anniversary of their national domains.”
First Deputy Minister of Communications and Informatization of the Republic of Belarus Pavel Tkach added that TLDCON 2024 brings together the professional community to discuss key issues related to the development of the Internet and ccTLDs.
“Partnerships between our countries in holding such conferences and forums play a key role in shaping a common strategy for the development of the Internet. Only by joint efforts can we continue to develop national domains, ensure user security and support cultural diversity on the Internet,” Pavel Tkach said.
He also cited data on the development of the Internet in the Republic of Belarus: the share of the population using the Internet is 91.5%, broadband penetration is 35 units per 100 people, and wireless is more than 103 units, the average volume of traffic consumed in a fixed network is 200 GB, and in a mobile network - 10 GB.
Sergey Povalishev (hoster.by - the host of the Conference) spoke about the development of Belarusian domain zones: in 2024, among new registrations, 63% were domains in .BY, 5.7% in .БЕЛ and another 5.6% in .RU. At the same time, .RU took third place for the first time, bypassing .COM.
Sergey Prokopov (beCloud, technical administrator of .BY and .БЕЛ) presented statistics on Belarusian domains. In total, 146,000 names are registered in the republic: 93,000 of them are registered by legal entities, 53,000 by individuals. At the same time, 10% are registered by foreign users, and 90% by residents of Belarus, individuals and legal entities. He also noted that the .BY and .БЕЛ zones have reached a plateau of saturation and explosive growth is not expected yet.
During the Conference, it was announced that applications for the Second Round of the New gTLD program will begin to be accepted in April 2026, and this process will take 12-15 weeks. This was reported by Patrick Jones (ICANN). He also spoke about the Applicant Support Program, which provides subsidies for applications from non-profit, charitable and intergovernmental organizations and a number of other companies.
Andrey Kuzmichev (Runity Group) spoke about the first results of the implementation of the Unified System of Identification and Authentication (USIA) for confirming the identity of the domain name administrator.
"Identity verification through State Services really does qualitatively improve the user experience, and the addition of customer identification itself increases the level of security for all participants in the Internet economy," Kuzmichev said. "We expect that with the growth of identification implementations, the number of new domain registrations may decrease, but trust in administrators will increase many times over, and the number of frauds will decrease significantly. In our experience, the implementation of the Unified System of Identification and Authentication does not result in additional costs for the provider for identification via SMS or calls, and the consent issued by users allows for regular data updates."
Much attention at TLDCON 2024 was paid to the increase in the number of cyber threats in RuNet. Experts noted a significant increase in phishing, cyberattacks, as well as the emergence of increasingly sophisticated fraudulent schemes. In addition, threats come from user carelessness: according to Runiti Group, only 13% of the largest companies use two-factor authentication to protect their domain accounts with the registrar.
As Andrey Vorobyev explained, hacking an account allows a hacker to change the DNS servers to their own, launch a phishing copy of the web and mail server, and then intercept all user requests to the website, as well as email correspondence, including the ability to send spam and phishing letters.
"For the company itself, this means not only heavy losses of face, but also fines and inspections by Roskomnadzor in connection with data leakage, as well as participation in criminal cases initiated on the fact of theft of clients' funds," he said.
An important task for ensuring user security today is the introduction of domestic SSL certificates. As experts from the Technical Center for Internet reported at the Conference, currently most certificates for Russian websites are issued by foreign certification centers: 87% - Let's Encrypt, 6% - Google Trust Services, 5% - GlobalSign. Thus, certificates for 97% of Russian websites can be revoked at any time, and the websites will become unprotected and dangerous from the point of view of browsers. As Alexey Rogdev, General Director of the Technical Center for Internet, said, the Center has created its own certificate issuing by itself, and today the purchase of GOST and ECDSA SSL certificates from the Technical Center for Internet is available to RU-CENTER clients. In matters of implementing domestic SSL certificates, government support is important, and Andrey Kuzmichev informed TLDCON 2024 participants that the first proposal for regulating SSL certificates in Russia will be presented to the Ministry of Digital Development this fall.
Another important topic of the Conference was the state of the RuNet economy. Sergey Grebennikov (RAEC) noted that the volume of the Russian Internet economy by the end of 2023 reached 17.1 trillion rubles, and its growth was more than 40%. According to RAEC, more than 85% of Russian residents use the Internet almost every day, and the volume of the Internet economy by the end of this year will reach 23.8 trillion rubles. He named import substitution and public-private partnership, which will continue to be the driver of network development, as the main trends of RuNet that ensure its high growth rate.
Summing up the Conference, Andrey Vorobyev noted that TLDCON continues to develop dynamically, and thanks to the participation of leading experts, it has become interesting to a wide audience.
The next, 18th International Conference of Administrators and Registrars of National Top-Level Domains of the CIS, Central and Eastern Europe will be held in the fall of 2025 in Kaliningrad.
The Conference is organized by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, the general partner is the Technical Center for Internet. Partners are MSK-IX, RIPN and the Runiti Group of Companies, hoster.by is the host of the Conference. Information partners of TLDCON 2024: media holding RG Media, Belarusian Telegraph Agency (BELTA), online publications Tochka.by, 024.by, Comnews.ru, D-Russia.ru, RSpectr.com, ICT-Online.ru, ICT2GO.ru, IT-World.ru, Securitymedia.org, Mobile Telecommunications, as well as Open Systems Publishing House, RAEC, Office Life and Vestnik Svyazi magazines.
