The General Data Protection Regulation is celebrating its one-year anniversary: On May 25 last year the European Union implemented the most extensive and attention-grabbing measure in the field of data protection law in Europe. What were the impacts the GDPR regulation had on us as the Austrian registry, which measures have been implemented, and how does our position compared internationally? Time to assess the situation with our legal department’s lawyers Barbara Schloßbauer and Bernhard Erler.

Our anniversary year is drawing to a close. In the last nic//report for this year, we take a look back on all the milestones and highlights. We also interviewed to very interesting people: Oliver Hauser - SEO specialist from Salzburg. He talks about his very own domain strategy and what the trends 2019 are. Secondly our beloved Oma Elfriede - respectively the woman behind our campagne heroine. Happy reading!

The nic.at research and development team focuses on topics relating to the future of the DNS and the internet. Two meetings are coming up this October: the informal DNSheads Vienna and a meet-up dedicated to blockchains. We talk to Alexander Mayrhofer, head of the nic.at R&D team.

.at is the chosen home for many Austrians online. In fact, 936,857 .at domains are registered to postal addresses in the country – 72.6 % of all .at domains out there. But which towns, cities and districts lead the way when it comes to domain names? To mark the 30th anniversary of the .at domain, we went off in search of answers. The good news right away: there is not a single district in Austria without at least one .at registration. Even tiny places like Namlos, Tschanigraben, Gramais and Kaisers – each with a population of below 70 – are home to owners of .at domains.

We’re really pleased that you have picked up this special anniversary edition of the nic//report. This year we are celebrating our 80th birthday. That can’t be right? Well, it is if you add up all of our jubilees: 10 years of CERT.at, 20 years of Stopline,

Promoting the Internet in Austria is one of the goals enshrined in the articles of incorporation of the Internet Foundation Austria, nic.at’s owner. Over recent decades the Internet has not only become an essential element of numerous business processes, but is also an integral part of many people’s daily lives. As a result, we have to ensure that we are ideally placed to meet and counter threats and security risks as they emerge. A national CERT as an independent information hub presented itself as the ideal opportunity to leverage the available synergies while promoting the goals of the foundation. The greatest challenge that we faced was establishing an effective team to rapidly embed us in national and international networks and help us establish the level of trust required for quality information exchange. As face to face contact and direct communications are an essential part of this, a significant amount of our initial work focused on building up a network of dependable contacts at home and abroad, rather than the technical side of things.

Stopline was an independent initiative set up by the Austrian Internet service providers to combat illegal content online, after images of child abuse were discovered on the server of an Austrian host provider. ISPA (then newly founded), nic.at, representatives of the police reporting centres, legal experts and other national stakeholders were involved in establishing Stopline. The challenge at the time was to raise awareness of illegal content online and publicise the existence of the new reporting centre without demonising the Internet as a whole.

Due to the GDPR nic.at has undertaken changes in the Whois policy as well as the registration and management of .at-domains and has published all necessary data protection information. These are the most important points:

Due to the GDPR, nic.at has implemented a new Whois policy: Data of natural persons are not published any longer. Information on these data will only be given to people who provide proof of identity and are able to prove a legitimate interest for finding out who the domain holder is.  Natural persons can still have their data published if they wish.

The nic.at WHOIS database, the public register of all registered .at domains, currently contains details on the holders of and contact persons for .at domains, regardless of whether they are companies or private individuals. Under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), nic.at will only publish legal persons’ data from mid-May 2018. Natural persons can still have their data published if they wish.

The Dutch registry SIDN and Austria’s registry nic.at have signed a cooperation agreement, under which all domains managed by SIDN will additionally be hosted on the nic.at anycast network RcodeZero DNS. The agreement was announced by SIDN’s CEO Roelof Meijer and nic.at CEO Richard Wein on the sidelines of the ICANN meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The Republic of Austria is not the only one celebrating a birthday this year: Austria’s Internet also has many reasons to celebrate. Exactly 30 years ago, the Country Code Top-Level Domain .at was added to the global Domain Name System. In 1998, the Austrian Registry nic.at was founded together with the report centre Stopline. 10 years later, CERT.at (Austria’s Computer Emergency Response Team) was founded.

In case you are looking for a creative New Year's Eve drink to surprise your guests with: We have come up with something special this year! Try the nic.at Cranberry Orance Secco. The elegant drikn in nic.at red is bound to turn heads at your party.

In our current nic//report we want to review the year gone by and to give an outlook on the year to come. Take a dip into the diversified world of nic.at and see what has kept us busy in 2017!

Like all other companies, registries and registrars must ensure they comply with the GDPR from 25 May 2018. A group of experts discussed the specific implications for the domain industry – which come in addition to the general requirements – at the nic.at Registrar Day in Vienna on 30 November 2017.