IE Domain Registry t/a .IE

Promoting nationwide digital adoption In 2020, the Board of Directors approved a €1 million investment in the .IE Digital Town programme over four years. The programme has three elements: – Big Data for small towns; secondly, the .IE Digital Town Awards which was developed to promote awareness, knowledge, use and understanding of the internet in Ireland by its citizens, businesses and communities. It also highlights the benefits and possibilities of the internet and celebrates the digital achievements of local towns. The third element is the .IE Digital Town Blueprint, a digital readiness framework developed to help town leaders and policymakers embed their own digital town action plans in empirical data. .IE partnered with the Irish Institute of Digital Business at DCU to fully explore the concept and value of the “digital town” through a comprehensive research project. The resultant framework is the first of its kind in Europe and forms the basis of the Blueprint. In designing the programme, the company has leveraged its many years of experience, research and learnings with its earlier initiatives such as Optimise, Internet Day and Digital Town Gorey (2018) and Sligo (2019). Policy Advisory Committee (PAC) During 2020, the substantive work of the Policy Advisory Committee focused on the formulation of a policy response to handling technical abuse or criminal abuse (illegality) which uses the .ie domain name system. A separate workstream led to a policy mandating all Registrars to provide an abuse email contact in the .ie WHOIS service. This enables the general public to submit a report of online abuse to the Registrar. It is important for Ireland to have this multi-stakeholder industry advisory body. The Policy Advisory Committee follows a 10-step framework known as the .ie Policy Development Process (PDP). The PDP is designed to be bottom-up and consensus- driven. Further information is included on the .IE website and in the Policy Development section below. EU Regulatory environment emerging Cyber threats continue to grow in frequency and amplitude. The SolarWinds hack of 2020 impacted over 30,000 organisations’ systems infrastructures and is widely attributed to state intelligence services. Abuses using the domain name system (DNS) continue to grow along with virus and ransomware. During 2020 Covid-19 has accelerated the adoption of digital services by citizens, government and corporates. All businesses are increasingly dependent on third party services - from major cloud providers, through the ecosystem of software as a service (SaaS) providers and managed service providers, to a new world of data and analytics service providers. Concerned by the level of cyber threats, EU regulatory response has intensified and continues to reach into the domain market, beyond data privacy into cyber security. Already, GDPR was introduced in 2018, which had a significant regulatory impact on the domain industry, particularly on the nature and extent of the WHOIS lookup service for domains. In 2019, the EU issued the Directive on the Security of Network and Information Systems (NIS), which led to the designation of ccTLDs as operators of essential services (OES). In December 2020, a proposed extension to the Directive (NIS2) was published, to address perceived weaknesses in the original Directive, and DNS providers are now to be included. It is clear that increased resources and attention will be necessary to manage the disruption and cost impact of a rapidly expanding regulatory regime. Outlook for 2021 Nationally, new registration growth continued into 2021, as the second Covid-19 lockdown led to a renewed respect for the power of websites and digital communications. In Q1 alone, there was a 34% increase in new .ie registrations compared to the same period of 2020. The outcome for the first half of 2021 at 33,815 new .ie domains, is flat compared to the same period in 2020 (33,285 domains). This moderation in .ie domain growth by mid-2021 is replicated in many ccTLDs across Europe. The future growth is uncertain in this regard. The work of the .IE Policy Advisory Committee is continuing into 2021 in response to developments impacting ccTLD registries, in particular EU cyber security initiatives NIS2 and regulations impacting the Digital Single Market. As we develop our strategy to 2024, I look forward to working with our Board of Directors and thank the members and the Board sub-committees for their ongoing support and expertise. Our dedicated staff at .IE deserve huge credit and respect for their outstanding contribution to the continued growth of the .ie namespace, the development of our policies and services and of paramount importance, the protection of our mission- critical systems and the DNS. It is a pleasure to work with such a dedicated team of talented professionals. Together, we will ensure that .IE becomes the trusted standard bearer in terms of online security, standards and innovation thereby evolving in our vital role in Ireland’s digital journey. David Curtin Chief Executive 31 July 2021 IE Domain Registry CLG t/a .IE / Annual Report & Review 2020 8 Chief Executive's Report