In wake of gTLD security criticism, ICANN announces emergency back-up registry operators

IDG News Service – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has selected three emergency back-end registry operators to guarantee domain names within a new generic top-level domain (gTLD)A will resolve in the event of a failure at a new TLD operator, it said on Tuesday.

[ALSO: Groups say ICANN unprepared for gTLD launch]

The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), U.S. based Neustar and the U.K. based Nominet were selected, the ICANN said in a news release.

Emergency back-end registry operators, or EBEROs, are activated if a registry operator fails to provide or is unable to sustain five critical registry functions temporarily, or in the case of transition from one registry operator to another, ICANN said. “Having them in different regions of the world reduces the chance that a natural disaster would affect all three at any one time,” it added. read more