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Review of the Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC)
21 May 2009
Background
In accordance with Article XI, Section 2 of the Bylaws, the role of the Security and Stability Advisory Committee ("SSAC") is to advise the ICANN community and Board on matters relating to the security and integrity of the Internet's naming and address allocation systems. This includes operational matters (e.g., matters pertaining to the correct and reliable operation of the root name system), administrative matters (e.g., matters pertaining to address allocation and Internet number assignment), and registration matters (e.g., matters pertaining to registry and registrar services such as WHOIS). SSAC engages in ongoing threat assessment and risk analysis of the Internet naming and address allocation services to assess where the principal threats to stability and security lie, and advises the ICANN community accordingly.
The SSAC's Chair and its members are appointed by the Board. The SSAC appoints a non-voting liaison to the ICANN Board.
For more information about SSAC, see http://www.icann.org/committees/security/.
SSAC Review Working Group
At the recommendation of the Board Governance Committee (BGC), the ICANN's Board appointed the following individuals to serve on the SSAC Review Working Group: Dennis Jennings (Chair); Robert Blokzijl; Reinhard Scholl; and Suzanne Woolf. The working group was formed to help ensure that the consultant's final report contained the information needed to conduct the work of the BGC (now, Structural Improvements Committee) and to advise (taking into consideration comments from stakeholders and the public) whether any change is needed for the SSAC.
Update
The Board has appointed JAS Communications as the consultants for the independent review of the SSAC. The consultants started their assignment during the Cairo meeting in November 2008, where they interviewed and received inputs from members of the community.
The consultants released their draft Final Report the 17 February 2009 for presentation and discussion with the community at the Mexico City meeting; the slides used during the presentation and the transcripts are published at http://mex.icann.org/node/2662.The independent consultants’ draft report [PDF, 677K] is published in English; the full report includes also an Executive Summary.
Translations of the Executive Summary in FR, AR, ES, RU and ZH are available, as well (see below).
A public comment period of consultants’ draft reportwas open until the 22 April 2009 and comments were received from the community.
Following inputs received during presentation, public comments and from the SSAC review Working Group, the consultants finalized their final report.
The independent consultants' final report [PDF, 749K] is published in English; further linguistic versions will follow shortly.
A public comment period of consultants' final report is now open until the 28 June 2009, to allow for final inputs from the community.
Next steps
Comments from the community to the independent reviewers’ final report will provide inputs to the following activities of the Working Group, which will formulate its recommendations to the Structural Improvements Committee and the Board. These WG recommendations, in turn, will be published for public comments before finalization.
Links
- Request for Proposals and Terms of Reference
- Draft Final Report of the external reviewers [EN, PDF, 677K]
- Executive Summary of the Draft Final Report of the external reviewers:
- Public comments to the draft report of external consultants
- Final Report of the external reviewers [EN,PDF, 7495K]
- Public comments to the final report of external consultants