April 11, 2007 at 16:22Do banks need their own domain zone?
F-Secure , a network security company , has sent a request to ICANN to give officially registered banks and other financial institutions the opportunity to use .safe, .sure or .bank top-level domains.
Justifying its request, the company reports that in the second half of 2006 the number of “phishing domains” that steal visitors' financial information under the guise of banking sites increased by 94%. Using a domain such as .safe, which will be available only to officially registered organizations, will facilitate the work of companies involved in security issues: they will be able to more effectively filter network traffic, cut off spam, etc.
By the way, ICANN will not consider this issue: the organization is not required to respond to open letters, requests from individual organizations, press releases, etc. In this case, the situation will help solve only a collective appeal from a consortium of banks.
If we talk about the “quality of the idea”, one thing confuses: if you place all the sites of financial institutions in the .safe zone, it will create the false impression that all other zones are not safe at all, and this zone is safe. It will not be possible to call it 100% safe - simply because no site is safe from other vulnerabilities: the introduction of a new top-level domain will simply reduce the risk of being caught by a “phishing hook”, but it will not cover possible “holes” in sites.
Justifying its request, the company reports that in the second half of 2006 the number of “phishing domains” that steal visitors' financial information under the guise of banking sites increased by 94%. Using a domain such as .safe, which will be available only to officially registered organizations, will facilitate the work of companies involved in security issues: they will be able to more effectively filter network traffic, cut off spam, etc.
By the way, ICANN will not consider this issue: the organization is not required to respond to open letters, requests from individual organizations, press releases, etc. In this case, the situation will help solve only a collective appeal from a consortium of banks.
If we talk about the “quality of the idea”, one thing confuses: if you place all the sites of financial institutions in the .safe zone, it will create the false impression that all other zones are not safe at all, and this zone is safe. It will not be possible to call it 100% safe - simply because no site is safe from other vulnerabilities: the introduction of a new top-level domain will simply reduce the risk of being caught by a “phishing hook”, but it will not cover possible “holes” in sites.