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.

After days and nights spent working away in our offices, comparing notes in various meeting rooms and talking to numerous different agencies, we can now finally present the brand-new nic.at website. As you have probably noticed, we have also given our branding a complete makeover.

Since it was founded in 1998, nic.at has steadily expanded its service portfolio. In 2004 we set up ipcom GmbH, the subsidiary tasked with taking RcodeZero Anycyst DNS to market. What began as a basic Anycast service with only a few locations is now a powerful network with a host of additional services for a stable DNS.

We have the perfect accessory to help bring the curtain down on summer: a year’s subscription to Hopfenbox, a range of carefully selected, slow-brewed speciality beers with a seasonal theme from international award-winning private brewery Trumer in Salzburg.

All you need to take the beer mat

What do a leek, a circus tent and award-winning chef Toni Mörwald have in common? That’s right –  all three played a central role at the 2017 Domain pulse evening event at Palazzo in Vienna. Whisking participants off on a journey into the world of the ‘Thrill Seekers’, the spectacular show capped an action-packed opening day at the conference, which was held under the banner of Networks and Networkers this year.

“Insurance delivers peace of mind”: that’s the time-honoured promise that brokers have always used to sell their services. But does this also hold true with the kinds of risk only found in the IT sector?

This was the discussion we had with nic.at registrars at a roundtable meeting a few years ago. When the time came to update our registrar contracts we also decided to take a look at issues of liability and possible claims for damages in the domain business. And we soon saw that standard indemnity insurance policies did not extend to various cyber risks.