eco has issued a statement on Article 28 of the recently published NIS2 Directive. The draft contains EU-wide minimum standards for cybersecurity, which impacts operators of critical infrastructure, among others. The newly introduced Article 28 affects not only operators of critical infrastructure, but also all “TLD name registries and entities providing domain name registration services” – regardless of their size.
The transposition of EU directives is the responsibility of the individual Member States. The affected stakeholders, therefore, are concerned that they will have to take 27 different regulations into account. Particularly for the domain industry, this national transposition contrasts with the global character of the Internet, whose policies are mostly regulated uniformly on a worldwide basis by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN).
Article 28 of the NIS2 Directive now stipulates regulation in this area, but the respective transposition in the EU countries raises questions. Thomas Rickert, Director of Names & Numbers at the eco Association, comments:
“What makes NIS2 a challenge for the domain industry is the fact that it comes in the form of a directive. A directive is a legal act that sets a goal that all EU countries must achieve. However, how this goal is achieved is left to each country to a certain extent. This could mean that in future there will be up to 27 different procedures for validating registrant data used to register a domain name.
“This not only leads to a high level of complexity for the companies and organisations concerned when transposing the NIS2 Directive, but also poses a risk to end customers, who may have to go through numerous validation procedures when registering domains with different endings. This not only causes inconvenience for customers but also becomes a significant competitive disadvantage for domain registrars based in Europe in the long run.”
The transposition of the NIS2 Directive will be discussed on 20 October in Hamburg during the ICANN78 Day Zero Workshop organised by eco Association. Registration is free of charge: https://international.eco.de/event/icann78-day-zero-workshop-nis2-directive-impact-on-the-dns-industry/
