Independent Studies Examine Far-Reaching Benefits of DNSSEC for Hardware and Software Vendor Communities
The studies feature new research devoted to gauging vendor attitudes toward DNSSEC and the adoption of DNSSEC in the hardware and software communities. DNSSEC is used to authenticate DNS data to help prevent cache poisoning and man-in-the-middle attacks.
VeriSign will host a webinar on Dec.14 to outline key findings from the Forrester study for hardware vendors. Cisco Systems executives Joe Dallatore, Sr. Manager, Security Research and Operations group, and Patrik Fältström, Distinguished Consulting Engineer in the Office of the CTO, will also participate. In addition, VeriSign will host a webinar on Dec.16 to outline key findings from the Forrester study for software vendors.
Following the webinars, white papers will be publicly available at http://www.verisign.com/dnssec.
"The Internet is an increasingly critical infrastructure for our government, economy, society and national security, which is why it's so important that the entire Internet community adopt DNSSEC," said Pat Kane, Assistant General Manager of Naming Services at VeriSign. "If hardware vendors, software companies, ISPs, registries and registrars work collaboratively, it will help to facilitate a smooth, widely effective implementation of DNSSEC."
Among Forrester's key findings:
- A significant number of companies saw substantial customer demand for DNSSEC in the last 12 months
- A high percentage of companies said they already support, or are currently testing support for DNSSEC
- The majority of companies believed support for DNSSEC could be implemented within six months
- Three quarters of the companies indicated a desire to participate in VeriSign's DNSSEC Interoperability Lab
DNSSEC applies digital signatures to DNS data to authenticate the data's origin and verify its integrity as it moves throughout the Internet. The security extensions are designed to protect the DNS from attacks intended to redirect queries to malicious sites by corrupting DNS data stored on recursive servers. The successful implementation of DNSSEC will eliminate a hacker's ability to manipulate DNS data. The resulting digital signatures on that DNS data are validated through a "chain of trust."
VeriSign, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Commerce and ICANN, deployed DNSSEC in the DNS root zone in July. In addition, the company deployed DNSSEC in the .edu zone in August. VeriSign expects to sign .net by the end of this year and .com by the end of the first quarter of 2011.
About VeriSign
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