The Internet has been growing for decades. Service providers focus on ensuring the availability, reliability, and consistency of the Internet under normal conditions. That focus made sense when the Internet was one system among many. The Internet now underpins financial markets, public services, and global communications. Today, the Internet is no longer just a tool. It is critical infrastructure.
A traditional focus on stability under normal conditions is no longer sufficient. Resilience has become essential —not as an abstract concept, but as a practical discipline. The modern Internet is no longer a loosely connected network; it is a tightly coupled system of shared infrastructure, cloud platforms, software supply chains, and power dependencies.
Failures are no longer isolated. A disruption in one layer, whether technical, operational, or geopolitical, can ripple across the system in ways that are difficult to predict and hard to contain. The very scale and interconnectedness that make the Internet powerful also make it vulnerable. Recent large-scale outages have underscored how disruptions in shared infrastructure can propagate rapidly across dependent systems.
During ICANN85, the Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) brought this issue into the spotlight with a plenary session titled, "From Stability to Survivability: ICANN's Role in the Future of Internet Resilience." The aim was simple: to challenge the assumption that stability alone is sufficient.
It is not.
The risk landscape is changing. Infrastructure is becoming more concentrated. Supply chains are more complex and globally interdependent. New technologies, including artificial intelligence, are accelerating both capability and risk. The scale and concentration of today's Internet infrastructure mean that failures now are fundamentally different from those of a decade ago.
Resilience requires more than redundancy; it requires the ability to anticipate failure, limit its impact, and recover quickly. It requires understanding not just how systems operate, but how they break and how those failures propagate across the ecosystem.
This raises important questions for ICANN. What does resilience mean for the Domain Name System (DNS)? Where are the points of systemic vulnerability in today's DNS? And what role should ICANN play in addressing these risks within its remit?
These are not theoretical questions. They go to the heart of whether the DNS can continue to serve as a foundation of modern society if placed under stress.
Since its inception, SSAC has advised ICANN on issues of security, stability, and resilience (SSR). Strategically, our framework of keystone topics drives our commitment to providing consistent, valuable support on pressing matters. One such focus area is on Internet governance and SSR. The intersection between these two topics has fueled some of our most recent publications, including SAC-132: The Domain Name System Runs on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), which acknowledges the role of policymakers in protecting the integrity of critical Internet infrastructure.
SSAC will continue to evolve this discussion by identifying emerging risks, highlighting areas for further study, and supporting ICANN in developing a more comprehensive understanding of Internet resilience. We value our growing engagement on this and other security and stability issues with our partners across the ICANN community and with the ICANN Board and organization.
The Internet has proven that it can operate reliably under normal conditions. The challenge now is to make it resilient to survive extraordinary circumstances.
