The ICANN78 Annual General Meeting not only served as a key gathering for discussing the future of the internet, but also marked a historic milestone: the 25th anniversary of ICANN. This quarter-century celebration highlighted ICANN’s enduring commitment to maintaining the global digital landscape’s integrity and its essential role in shaping the internet as we know it today. This blog post reviews the key topics and discussions from the event, highlighting the ongoing efforts to shape a resilient, secure, and inclusive digital future. 

During ICANN78, several key topics were discussed: 

• Global Digital Compact and Summit of the Future: Discussions about how these platforms will influence the future of the internet with a noted increase in national states’ interests in internet governance and the scope of ICANN’s role.
• Trust in Internet Governance: Mutual trust between parties has been crucial for the Internet’s decentralized and shared multi-stakeholder governance. 
• Challenges to the Multistakeholder Model: Current economic and social crises have led to questions about the effectiveness and representation within the multistakeholder approach and ICANN’s structure. 
• Digital Sovereignty: The concept is increasingly used by states and private entities, affecting the internet’s open structure and potentially compromising its resilience and reliability. 
• WSIS + 20: Marking two decades since the World Summit on the Information Society, this conference provided an opportunity to revisit commitments to internet Governance and highlighted the pressure from nation-states to adopt a multilateral model over the multistakeholder approach. 

DNSSEC and Security Workshop. 

The DNSSEC and Security Workshop at ICANN78, held in cooperation with the ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC), focused on several critical areas of DNSSEC deployment: 

• Global DNSSEC Activities Panel: Engagement with those involved in DNSSEC deployment and a discussion on Root Key Signing Key (KSK) rollover activities and plans. 
• DNSSEC Best Practices: This session covered operational learnings, discussed key management practices, algorithm rollovers, disaster recovery, and signed zone transfer. 
• DNSSEC Deployment Challenges: This discussion addressed policies that may impede deployment and enhance complexity, as well as the trade-offs of implementing DNSSEC. 
• Security Panel: The Security Panel explored broader security topics impacting DNS and DNSSEC, including emerging threats, Domain Name System Security Extensions, DNS over HTTPS (DoH), DNS over TLS (DoT), Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI), Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing, and email security related to DNS. 

Vercara’s distinguished engineer, Steve DeJong, presented forward-thinking initiatives around automating multi-signer DNSSEC amongst diverse providers. Vercara is proud to take a leadership position in the evolution of this critical security technology. 

DNS abuse discussions. 

During ICANN78, several discussions took place regarding DNS abuse, explicitly focusing on amendments to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) and Base Registry Agreement. Here are the key points: 

• DNS Abuse Amendments: The amendments define DNS abuse as malware, botnets, phishing, pharming, and spam when it serves as a delivery mechanism for these types of abuse. It also introduces the ability to submit abuse reports via web forms, not just email, and obligates registrars to take action upon receiving such reports. 
• Registration Data Policy Completion: The policy work was completed, addressing issues such as the timeframe for responding to urgent data disclosure requests and the implementation period for registrars and registries to comply with the new policy. An 18-month implementation window was agreed upon after considering different approaches. 
• Transfer Policy Review: The Transfer Policy Review PDP Working Group met to continue their work on ICANN-approved transfers and considered changes to the Transfer Dispute Resolution Policy (TDRP), including whether registrants should be allowed to initiate disputes under the TDRP. 

New gTLD Program update. 

At ICANN78, an update was provided on the second round of the new gTLD program. This session focused on the Implementation Status of the new gTLD Program’s next round, following up on the Board’s approval of the Final Report on the new gTLD Subsequent Procedures (SubPro) at ICANN76 and the progress made since ICANN77. ICANN plans to launch the second round of gTLD applications in Q2 2026. 

ICANN78 and the future of internet governance.  

As ICANN78 concluded, it was evident that the conference was not just about reflecting on the past but more about paving the way for future governance strategies. The event was a reminder that the journey through internet governance is an ever-evolving path, and we at Vercara are proud to be part of this transformative journey. 

For more thought-provoking security events, be sure to check out our events page.