Lauren

On July 28th DNSSEC took center stage at the 2010 Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas.  Two years ago, at the same conference, Dan Kaminsky unveiled the infamous DNS bug that many believe became a major catalyst for DNSSEC implementation.  To kick things off, Jeff Moss -founder of Black Hat - in his opening speech called out the fact that "we have not solved any fundamental problems” and noted that the technical community must catch up. Providing countless band-aids for major issues is not acceptable when working towards a safe and secure internet for all.  Roughly four hours later Rod Beckstrom declared to a packed room of reporters that “DNSSEC is the biggest structural improvement in the Internet in 20 years, specifically, since the introduction of the world wide web.”  Clearly, DNSSEC is not a band-aid fix.  

For months, our community has been abuzz with one word: DNSSEC. Now, it’s trickling into the White House.

Just yesterday, U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced, as part of a larger cybersecurity policy review, that the Commerce Department is one step closer to making “significant progress is helping the Internet become more robust and secure” by deploying DNSSEC at the root of the Domain Name System (DNS). “This action will essentially give a ‘tamper proof seal’ to the address book of the Internet – a seal that gives Internet users confidence in their online experience,” he stated.

The global deployment of Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) is charging ahead. With ICANN 38 Brussels just around the corner, DNSSEC deployment will inevitably be the hot topic of discussion over the next few days. Case in point, today, ICANN hosted the first production key ceremony at a secure facility in Culpepper, Va. where the first cryptographic digital key was used to secure the Internet root zone.

The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) just published a best practice guide on deploying DNSSEC.  This document was authored by a dream team of DNSSEC experts from organizations including ENISA, .SE, AUTH-NOC, Kirei, IKS-JENA, NLnet Labs, and Cisco. This best practices guide addresses DNSSEC policies, procedures and operational considerations from the perspective of information security managers. A must read!