Afilias senior vice president and chief marketing officer Roland LaPlante explains the company's history of preventing Internet abuse and what current challenges lie ahead.
In an email Q&A with the WHIR, Afilias senior vice president and chief marketing officer Roland LaPlante explains Afilias’ long history of supporting online safety and its recent participation with new organizations and initiatives.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Last week, domain name registry operator Afilias’ (www.afilias.info) discovery services vice president, Brian Cute, was named to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s Online Safety and Technology Working Group, established in US government’s “Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act.”
The 30-member working group will promote online safety through different educational efforts, as well as study the effectiveness of various safety tools and practices. The group will report to the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information on industry-implemented online child safety tools and efforts.
Afilias also announced it joined the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (www.maawg.org) as part of its ongoing domain name anti-abuse efforts, making it the first domain name registry operator to become a member of the organization, which focuses on protecting electronic messaging from online exploits and abuse. By joining the organization, Afilias will further enhance its ability to combat domain name abuses such as spam and phishing within .INFO.
In an email interview with the WHIR, Afilias senior vice president and chief marketing officer Roland LaPlante explains the company’s history of preventing Internet abuse and what current challenges lie ahead.
As a pioneer of anti-abuse policy, what milestones has Afilias accomplished in the past to prevent the abusive use of domain names?
Afilias has contributed significantly to both the understanding and execution of policies and tactics that a domain name registry can take to address Internet abuse practices. Domain name registries are in a unique position to understand and share critical information and trends concerning activities like spam, phishing and the spread of malware which can help defeat online criminals.
To date, Afilias has successfully implemented many programs, for example it’s the .INFO Domain Anti-Abuse policy issued last fall. Our efforts over the last year and a half have allowed us to remove threatening sites and have earned .INFO a rating of the “least phished-in” generic TLD, according to the APWG’s fall 2008 report. We also continue to be actively engaged in ICANN’s Fast-Flux Working Group, ICANN’s Registration Abuse Policy Working Group, and the Anti-Phishing Working Group.
To augment these security efforts, Afilias has been activity collaborating with the Conficker Working Group to defeat the Conficker worm and its variations which have been attempting to exploit gTLD and ccTLD domains. Since Afilias operates more top-level domains than any other registry services company, we have been working with our clients to block domains that Conficker sought to register to spread malware. To date, we have blocked hundreds of thousands of domains across the TLDs we support and expect that this will be over 1 million domains by the end of 2009.
In addition to our domain business, Afilias’ DNS services are focusing on the implementation of DNSSEC. We are able to provide DNSSEC both at the TLD level for our TLD clients, as well as at the corporate level with our a Managed 1-Click DNSSEC™ service, scheduled to rollout later this year. Our 1-Click DNSSEC service will simplify adoption of DNSSEC and enable a domain owner to secure their domain and protect it from man-in-the-middle and cache poisoning attacks.
Afilias has a long history of many types of domain protection mechanisms stretching back to the launch of .INFO in 2001. The .INFO sunrise was a landmark event in the industry, and has provided lessons that guide domain launches even today. In addition, INFO protected all the country names in the ISO3166-1 list, a first for an Internet domain. Afilias also helped PIR develop the first “anti-tasting” policy, the major parts of which have now become industry wide policy.
Having joined the company last year, discovery services vice president Brian Cute recently became a member of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s Online Safety and Technology Working Group. How has he helped lead the company’s online safety efforts, and what will his participation in the OSTWG mean to Afilias and its customers?
Online safety is a critical piece of the consumer experience with the Internet and no consumer is more vulnerable than children. Afilias has already fostered partnerships with leading international organizations like the Internet Watch Foundation to effectively share information and improve collaboration. Mr. Cute’s expertise in the industry and participation in the NTIA’s Online Safety and Technology Working Group is an extension of Afilias’ commitment to global Internet security and to create a collaborative, safe online environment for children.
With other members include AOL, AT&T, Cloudmark, Yahoo!, and Verizon, what is the significance of Afilias’ participation in the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group?
Afilias’ participation will enhance the ability to effectively combat abuse by expanding access to and sharing of information. Our participating in MAAWG will allow us to share information with these influential organizations and get access to new information that is useful in enforcing domain Anti-Abuse Policies.
How is domain name abuse such as spam and phishing different when dealing with .INFO (or any of the other specific domains) Afilias supports?
Afilias is actively tracking, investigating, and acting on critical issues such as spam and phishing. We are in a unique position with our past experience, pioneering anti-abuse policy and position as a service provide to more top level domains (TLDs) than anyone else. This position allows us to be most effective in combating this type of activity in .INFO.
Will Afilias’ recent participation in these initiatives have an effect on Afilias’ Discovery Services and Managed DNS services (launched earlier this year) either now or in the near future?
Internet security is a key priority for Afilias’ mission, business and operations. In all of our products, we seek to blend best of breed technology with security measures to enhance the Internet user experience.
Afilias’ Managed DNS Services are unique in ensuring security through diversity. It is not enough to just build your DNS network bigger – the only way to ensure true security is through diversity. Our DNS network, used both to support our TLD registries and our managed DNS customers, is built with diversity at every layer. This ensures that there is no single point of failure of hardware, software, geography, or network providers.
Similarly, Afilias Discovery Services enable secure and selective visibility and traceability for supply chains. A hosted, referral-based registry services, ADS provides a secure mechanism for companies to “track and trace” business event data, as well as to selectively share information regardless of the business application, so that competitive data stays secure.
