ICANN's founding promise and mandate are optimistic—ensure a stable and secure internet that benefits the internet community as a whole. Recent months, however, have highlighted the uncomfortable truth that ICANN's and the industry's approach to DNS abuse is actually moving backward, ignoring growing problems, abdicating on important policy issues, and making excuses for not acting. Further, the impending failure of ICANN's new WHOIS policy to address cybersecurity concerns will add fuel to the fire, resulting in accelerating DNS abuse that harms internet users across the globe.

ICANN, though, has an opportunity here to not disappoint its community by taking courageous steps toward doing the right thing about DNS abuse. First, it needs to fully enforce its contracts with those registries and registrars that routinely harbor bad actors and have excessive rates of abuse. It should also demand that any new WHOIS policy helps, not hinders, cybersecurity professionals mitigating DNS abuse in a timely manner.

Click here to read the full article published by CircleID.