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An Update on Technical Engagement

16 April 2013
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ICANN has a long tradition of working with the Internet community to support technical training, going back 10 years to the ICANN meeting in Carthage, Tunisia in October 2003. Over the years, these trainings have assisted with improving skills, creating awareness of DNS threats and mitigations, and enabled DNSSEC in a number of ccTLDs. Last month, ICANN, the Network Startup Resource Center (http://nsrc.org/) and ISOC Lebanon conducted DNSSEC training in Beirut, Lebanon. ICANN Security was also represented at the ION Singapore Conference in collaboration with the Internet Society’s Deploy 360 initiative (http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/).

In the Security team [https://www.icann.org/security], we see this technical engagement with the community as a key part of delivering on ICANN’s mission to facilitate the security, stability and resiliency of the Internet’s unique identifier systems through coordination and collaboration.

We do this with community partners across the globe, at the request of operators and universities in the Caribbean and the Middle East, in Africa, Asia-Pacific and South America. We have increasing interest among the law enforcement community for this training. The Security team recently conducted DNS training at Europol, at the International Criminal Law Network in the Netherlands, and with other agencies in the United Kingdom. We are exploring opportunities with the Commonwealth Cybercrime Initiative, and have upcoming DNSSEC training in Tunis, Tunisia next week.

The community has an opportunity to tell us what you think of this training, and on ICANN’s security activities by commenting on the FY 14 Security, Stability and Resiliency Framework. The document has been translated into 7 languages, and is open for comment through 20 April 2013 (with a reply comment period to 20 May 2013, 23:59 UTC). Please take some time to read this document, and provide comments.

Here is some testimony from Rick Lamb, one of our team members and a lead on DNSSEC adoption and engagement:

I consider myself fortunate to be able to participate in this space, following in the footsteps (and the beneficiary of the experience pool) of other seasoned ICANN trainers.

Although I have taught in the past, I had forgotten about the heady mixture of fear, happiness and exhilaration that comes from interacting with a classroom full of intelligent, interested students. After typically spending the better part of an intense week together, trusted relationships are forged, giving the students not just technical knowledge, but a sense of being part of the larger Internet community. These relationships clearly benefit everyone involved.

I know that these are familiar sensations for my seasoned colleagues, but I think that sometimes we should be reminded about the not-so-obvious value of training efforts and the importance of these personal interactions toward building and maintaining the international network of trust that keeps the international network we call the Internet running.

Dr. Richard Lamb
Sr. Program Manager, DNSSEC, ICANN

If you are interested in more information on these trainings, our partners at NSRC maintain excellent wiki pages providing past training agendas and materials. An example from the Lebanon training can be found at https://nsrc.org/workshops/2013/nsrc-isoclb-dnssec/.

ICANN, Network Startup Resource Center and ISOC Lebanon conducted DNSSEC training in Beirut, Lebanon

Photo Credit – Phil Regnauld, NSRC

ICANN, Network Startup Resource Center and ISOC Lebanon conducted DNSSEC training in Beirut, Lebanon

Photo Credit – Phil Regnauld, NSRC

Authors

Patrick Jones

Patrick Jones

VP, Global Stakeholder Engagement