LOS ANGELES – 22 May 2020 – Today, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced the signature of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams, Inc. (FIRST). The MoU aims to strengthen the relationship between ICANN and FIRST and enhance its collaborative efforts to support a safer, more secure, and resilient Domain Name System (DNS). These efforts are of interest to both parties and target important issues such as domain names used for abuse and security threats to the DNS. The agreement was signed by FIRST President and CEO Serge Droz and ICANN President and CEO Göran Marby.
"The role of the ICANN community, Board, and organization in maintaining a secure, stable, and unified system of identifiers for the Internet has always been important, but at this time, when reliance on the Internet has skyrocketed, our work with FIRST is vital." — Göran Marby, ICANN President and CEO.
Over the last few years, the cybersecurity and ICANN communities have centered discussions around identification of and mitigation efforts for domain name abuse and security threats to the DNS that affect millions of Internet users around the world. Through the MoU the organizations will advance their shared objective of helping the incident response community increase its understanding of the Internet's system of unique identifiers, and improve its efficiency and effectiveness in preventing, detecting, containing, mitigating, and analyzing malicious activity related to it. The MoU emphasizes cooperation on research, policy, and capacity-building activities focused on increasing risk awareness and DNS abuse mitigation practices. Read the full Memorandum of Understanding here.
About FIRST
Founded in 1990, the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) consists of internet emergency response teams from more than 529 corporations, government bodies, universities and other institutions across 96 countries in the Americas, Asia, Europe, Africa, and Oceania. It promotes cooperation among computer security incident response teams. For more information, visit: https://www.first.org.
About ICANN
ICANN's mission is to help ensure a stable, secure, and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet, you need to type an address – a name or a number – into your computer or other device. That address must be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN helps coordinate and support these unique identifiers across the world. ICANN was formed in 1998 as a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with a community of participants from all over the world.