IE-Annual-Report-2023

Internet Governance Now more than ever, the Internet needs guardians, guides and stewards. We are promoting and encouraging national Internet Governance through multi-stakeholder engagement focused on consumer protection protocols, policies and security programmes that coordinate and shape national cyberspace, in line with international best practices. At .IE, good Internet Governance permeates throughout our strategic priorities. We seek to protect stakeholders and to adopt policies, processes and procedures that take account of the need for balance, having regard to the respective roles and responsibilities of our registrants, Registrars and Internet users. We operate the Managed Registry model, validating .ie domain holders in advance. We check out who’s behind the .ie website making it safer for business and consumers. Our locking service prevents unauthorised changes to important .ie addresses and stops web hijacking. We adopted DNSSEC for the .ie top-level domain, thereby contributing to a more secure DNS. We have adopted a range of policies and rules to protect consumers, safeguard registrants and promote good Internet governance. You can read about our range of policies on our dedicated policy page on our website, www.weare.ie/our-policies. We have established consumer protection protocols with regulators to address online illegality and to permit ‘take-down’ of websites under certain circumstances. We operate a Regulatory Authority Protocol for dealing with illegal content on .ie websites. The regulatory authorities who we engage with include the CEA (formerly ODCE), the CCPC, the Central Bank, and ComReg. We operate Governance systems, which are transparent and professionally run to the highest standards. The quality of our financial reporting and transparency has been acknowledged by the Leinster Society of Chartered Accountants, where we were shortlisted many times in their annual awards competitions. We introduced an easy-to-use Dispute Resolution service (ADRP) “Fair play and a fair hearing”. We use independent third-party dispute resolution agencies – WIPO and EU Net Neutrals. We have proactively introduced Anti-Abuse measures, in cooperation with stakeholders (via our Policy Advisory Committee) and our Registrar channel. RFCs compliance – IETF standards and protocols – we adhere to RFCs which document the official Internet specifications, communications protocols and procedures published by the Internet Engineering Task Force, www.ietf.org . We regard ourselves as one of the guardians of national critical Internet infrastructure. Like all country-code registries across Europe, we are designated as an Operator of Essential Services (OES) under the NIS directive. Our programmes are dedicated to proactively fighting malware and phishing in the .ie namespace. Protecting consumers, our customers and SMEs is of the utmost importance to us and our Registrars. We have a 24-year track record of investing in and managing the national domain DNS infrastructure, selecting good providers to ensure that it is robust, resilient and has operated within the uptime commitment of 99.999%. We welcome stakeholder dialogue and consensus-building through our multi-stakeholder Policy Advisory Committee. Governance IE Domain Registry CLG t/a .IE / Annual Report & Review 2023 12