Internet Identifier System Research and Security, Stability, and Resiliency
Office of the Chief Technology Officer supports improving the Security, Stability, and Resiliency of Internet’s system of unique identifiers; researches issues related to those identifiers; provides capacity building training for DNS, DNSSEC, and Security; participates in technical and security community groups (IETF, regional TLDs, AntiPhishing)
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority Functions
Part of ICANN Operational functions include the maintenance or key Global Registries (Protocol Parameters, Top level IP number Prefixes and Top level Domain name delegation) under the IANA functions, and the Time Zone Database which contains the code and data that represents local time around the globe
Information Systems, Corporate Security, IT and DNS Engineering
Office of the Chief Information Officer monitors and maintains ICANN systems and technical operations, corporate security, and Information Technology. The DNS Engineering Team administers ICANN's DNS network services and the global L-root constellation.
Global Domain Division Technical Services
The Global Domains Division supports gTLD Registries and Registrars under contract with ICANN. This includes contracting for Emergency Backend Registry Operator, Registry and Registrar Data Escrow, operating the CZDS, and Registry Services Evaluation Process. Also supports IDNs, ccTLD Fast Track Process, Root Zone Label Generation Ruleset...
Quicklinks
Technical Operations
- ICANN70 Virtual Meeting ImprovementsIn January, the ICANN Board announced that ICANN70, originally scheduled as an in-person meeting in Cancún, Mexico, will be held as the fourth virtual ICANN Public Meeting. As part of ICANN org's ongoing efforts to improve these virtual Public Meetings and meet the needs...
05 Mar 2021 | By Ashwin Rangan, SVP, Engineering & Chief Information Officer
- A Peek into the ICANN Org Engineering “Factory” and an Update on CZDSDuring the recent ICANN69 Prep Week Q&A with the ICANN org executive team, I was asked how the Engineering & Information Technology (E&IT) function prioritizes its work overall, and in particular how work on the Centralized Zone Data Service (CZDS) was...
05 Nov 2020 | By Ashwin Rangan, SVP Engineering & Chief Information Officer
- ICANN69: Registration and Meeting Schedule AccessAs you may have read in my earlier blog, ICANN69 is rapidly approaching, and we have made several changes to enhance and secure the meeting sessions. One of the new requirements is that everyone mustregister forICANN69 in order to view the schedule and participation links...
12 Oct 2020 | By Ashwin Rangan, SVP Engineering & Chief Information Officer
- ICANN69 Update: Improving Your Meeting ExperienceWith all ICANN meetings, our goal is to provide a secure and inclusive space for all participants. The COVID-19 pandemic has made this objective all the more important. The virtual meeting format, which we launched with ICANN67 in March and improved with ICANN68 in June,...
24 Sep 2020 | By Ashwin Rangan, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer
- Important Update - ICANN68 to be Held as Zoom WebinarsOn the first day of ICANN68, several sessions were subject to instances of disruption, or “Zoombombing.” This occurs when Internet trolls interrupt public Zoom meetings and use Zoom’s features to share offensive audio, images, and video. The individuals responsible for...
22 Jun 2020 | By Ashwin Rangan, SVP, Engineering & Chief Information Officer
- Zoom Enhanced Security & Feature UpdatesFollowing a number of updates to Zoom in the past weeks, we felt that this would be a good time to review both ICANN org’s and the ICANN community’s usage of the application. You may recall our message last month alerting you to some of the coming changes to Zoom,...
16 Jun 2020 | By Ashwin Rangan, SVP, Engineering & Chief Information Officer
- Further Securing Zoom MeetingsIn an effort to ensure the security of our online meetings, ICANN is making several changes to our Zoom configuration. The majority of these changes are behind the scenes and will not greatly impact a typical user’s experience in Zoom. However, there are a few important...
04 May 2020 | By Ashwin Rangan, SVP Engineering & Chief Information Officer
- Trendsetting Virtual Meetings: Inquiring Minds Want to KnowWhen ICANN67 became ICANN’s first-ever virtual Public Meeting, little did we realize the interest it would stir. It was only after the Los Angeles Times reported on our preparation in its online and print editions that the importance of this ‘innovation’ started to sink...
20 Apr 2020 | By Ashwin Rangan, SVP, Engineering & Chief Information Officer
- Best-of-Breed Software: Not Just an AfterthoughtEvery day, the ICANN org, Board, and community use a number of different software platforms and applications to create and collaborate on ICANN’s work. This is especially the case right now, with so many of us working from home. Each one of these programs serves a...
16 Apr 2020 | By Ashwin Rangan, SVP Engineering & Chief Information Officer
- Addressing Recent Zoom NewsRecently, ICANN’s video conferencing platform, Zoom, has been in the news quite a bit. With shelter-in-place and work-from-home becoming more familiar, not only for the ICANN community but the world at large, Zoom has become a vital tool for many businesses. With this...
08 Apr 2020 | By Ashwin Rangan, SVP Engineering & Chief Information Officer
- Remote Participation During ICANN67Due to concerns over the COVID-19 coronavirus, ICANN’s 67th Public Meeting will now be a fully virtual experience. While we will still be providing remote participation for all sessions on the schedule, it will be modified for the current circumstances, including...
06 Mar 2020 | By Ashwin Rangan, SVP Engineering & Chief Information Officer
- Discontinuing Support for ICANN-Rooms Hotel NetworksICANN has decided to use the hotel's own Wi-Fi networks rather than creating ICANN's service set identifiers (SSIDs) at the hotel sites. The hotel manages and brands in-room Wi-Fi networks that appear as ICANN networks using a SSID; however, ICANN does not manage, own, or...
31 Oct 2019 | By Ashwin Rangan, SVP, Engineering & Chief Information Officer
- Zoom Security UpdateZoom recently added new settings to increase security and ensure meeting privacy. These new settings will enforce a password on all new meetings scheduled, but will not affect meetings that have been scheduled prior to 29 September 2019. The only participants who will be...
10 Oct 2019 | By Ashwin Rangan, SVP Engineering & Chief Information Officer
- Known Zoom VulnerabilitiesEarlier this week, two vulnerabilities in the Zoom application for Mac devices were disclosed by a security researcher. These vulnerabilities include the use of a local host web server on Mac devices to operate Zoom, and the way in which video is enabled for Zoom...
11 Jul 2019 | By Ashwin Rangan, SVP Engineering & Chief Information Officer
- Automated Transcripts from Zoom at ICANN65As you know, ICANN moved to Zoom as its web conferencing solution and we are pleased with the positive feedback we have received aboutthisnew system. One of the most welcome developments about Zoom has been the introduction of its automatic transcriptionfeature. You may...
23 Jun 2019 | By Ashwin Rangan, Senior Vice-President, Engineering and Chief Information Officer (CIO)
- ICANN's New Meeting Registration PlatformICANN has launched a new registration platform for ICANN Meetings and events. If you have registered in the past 15 months, you may receive an email to confirm or edit your existing profile, as well as past attendance details. Otherwise, you may create a new profile when...
14 Jun 2019 | By Ashwin Rangan
- ICANN's Move to Zoom: Follow-up Status Update and Response to FeedbackAs previously announced, ICANN org is deploying Zoom as ICANN's official remote participation (RP) platform. We are on track to transition entirely to Zoom in time for ICANN65 in Marrakech, Morocco. To reiterate from my previous blog, this change is being driven by a need...
09 May 2019 | By Ashwin Rangan, SVP Engineering & CIO
- Transitioning ICANN's Remote Participation Platform to ZoomAfter careful consideration, ICANN org has decided to transition our official remote participation platform from Adobe Connect to Zoom. In January 2019, we entered into a contract with Zoom to license its product for widespread deployment. Plans are being executed now so...
03 Apr 2019 | By Ashwin Rangan, SVP Engineering & Chief Information Officer
- Remote Participation at ICANN MeetingsEach year ICANN hosts three large Public Meetings as a means of providing stakeholders with in person meeting opportunities. ICANN Meetings include workshops, public forums, and working meetings where Internet policies can be discussed and developed. The Meetings are...
14 Dec 2018 | By Ashwin Rangan
- Routine Annual Disaster Recovery Process Is Better Than EverAs part of our annual disaster recovery protocol, this year we performed a live transition of our entire catalog of public web services - from our primary data center to our alternate data center. This test included www.icann.org, www.iana.org, whois.icann.org,...
08 Aug 2018 | By Ashwin Rangan, SVP Engineering & Chief Information Officer
- How the ITI Technical Infrastructure WorksWe've blogged previously that the Information Transparency Initiative (ITI) is a foundational project that aims to establish content governance and rebuild our underlying technical infrastructure. These key foundational deliverables will improve how we manage all of our...
21 Jun 2018 | By Ashwin Rangan, Senior Vice-President, Engineering and Chief Information Officer (CIO)
- Important Changes Coming to The Way You Use Adobe ConnectAs you know, issues were reported with Adobe Connect (AC) during ICANN61 in Puerto Rico and we later restored service. The way you access closed Adobe Connect sessions is changing so that the rooms are more secure. Room administrators or meeting organizers will apply...
20 Jun 2018 | By Ashwin Rangan, ICANN SVP Engineering and CIO
- ICANN Adobe Connect Services RestoredToday, I am writing to let you know that we are restoring ICANN's Adobe Connect collaboration services, effective 1 June 2018. This decision was made following extensive independent and joint forensics investigations by ICANN org, CoSo Cloud LLC (our Adobe Connect cloud...
31 May 2018 | By Ashwin Rangan, SVP Engineering & Chief Information Officer
- Adobe Connect UpdateI wanted to give you an update on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) plan for a remote participation tool and reinstating Adobe Connect. Based on your overwhelming sentiment, over 75% of you asked in one way or another for Adobe Connect, we...
08 May 2018 | By Ashwin Rangan
- ADOBE CONNECT – WHAT NEXT?As you know, the ICANN organization took down its Adobe Connect service midway through the ICANN61 meeting in response to reported issues with this service. Concurrently, we began to conduct our own forensic analysis of the reported incident and began working with our...
20 Apr 2018 | By Ashwin "Ash" Rangan, ICANN SVP Engineering and CIO
- Interim Tools for Remote ParticipationAs you know, during ICANN61 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the ICANN organization was made aware of possible issues with our Adobe Connect services. In an abundance of caution, we took immediate action and deactivated Adobe Connect services – both for external and internal...
26 Mar 2018 | By Ashwin Rangan
- More Information on the Adobe Connect IssueIn our last blog on this issue, we reported that our technical teams are testing various scenarios to determine the root cause of the technical issue affecting our use of Adobe Connect. We are investigating whether the issue was caused by the software, or ICANN's...
20 Mar 2018 | By Ashwin Rangan
- ICANN57: A Real-Life Audio-Video Disaster Recovery StoryVery few people realize what it actually takes to make an ICANN meeting run smoothly from the Network Operations Center backroom, where the InfoTech team orchestrates its magic with high energy. You’ve probably experienced the excellent remote capabilities to encourage...
26 Oct 2016 | By Ashwin Rangan
- Universal Acceptance Compliance at ICANN
Universal Acceptance ensures that all domain names and email addresses can be used by all Internet-enabled applications, devices and systems. It is essential for the continued expansion of the domain name system and provides a gateway to the next billion Internet users....10 Oct 2016 | By Ashwin Rangan
- Sharing Links Over Email: Security @ ICANNMany of you have read earlier posts by our CIO Ashwin Rangan regarding our ongoing improvements to ICANN's overall cybersecurity. This is a brief update on some recent security changes we've made to email services, some of which will be noticeable to many in the ICANN...
27 Sep 2016 | By Ashwin Rangan
- CIIO Perspectives: ICANN’s Incident Response ProtocolAs part of our mission to provide secure and stable digital services to the community, the ICANN Information Technology (IT) team takes information security incidents very seriously and thwarts these threats through a variety of measures. We know it's impossible to...
09 Nov 2015 | By Ashwin Rangan
- CIIO Perspectives- Volume 3A few weeks back, I blogged about how ICANN manages its IT assets and digital services in light of cyber-security threats. I also wrote at the time that we have engaged a globally-recognized, independent third party to annually audit ICANN's security controls, and I...
01 Jul 2015 | By Ash Rangan
- Hardening ICANN’s IT and Digital ServicesDuring ICANN52, many community members inquired after the state of ICANN's digital-services. In addition, in response to one of my blog posts, some of you met with Chris Gift, VP of Digital Services, and me to gain a deeper understanding of status and plans. And in a...
09 Jun 2015 | By Ashwin Rangan
- Service update on some ICANN hosted blogsThe content on several ICANN-hosted public blogs has been restored to service after being temporarily taken offline to investigate a software security vulnerability (blog.icann.org, www.dns.icann.org, in-addr-transition.icann.org, omblog.icann.org,...
20 Feb 2015 | By Ashwin Rangan
- Working Together to Tame the Coming TsunamiWatch Ashwin's Call to Action It is just over eight months since I joined ICANN and several noteworthy events have occurred since. Within a few days of coming on board, the IANA Stewardship Transition was announced. Fadi's efforts to appropriately position Internet...
17 Nov 2014 | By Ashwin Rangan, ICANN Chief Innovation and Information Officer
- Like a Swiss Watch
The very expression, "like a Swiss watch", evokes powerful (and almost universal) imagery. Of a mechanical device. Driven with precision. Elegance. Carefully engineered parts. Put together with loving labor. With cogs and wheels engaging. Each with its unique purpose....30 Jul 2014 | By Ashwin Rangan
- With a RASP in my Throat
Before joining ICANN, people had told me that it is unlike any other organization. Coming – as I did – from global companies like Samsung, Walmart, Bank of America and most recently, Edwards Lifesciences, I asked myself whether it could be that different. It has been...05 Jun 2014 | By Ashwin Rangan, ICANN Chief Information and Innovation Officer
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Technical Engagement Leadership
Ashwin RanganSVP, Engineering and Chief Information Officer (CIO)Ashwin ("Ash") Rangan joined ICANN as Chief Innovation and Information Officer (CIIO) in March 2014. He joins the ICANN staff... More >
Adiel AkploganVP, Technical EngagementAdiel A. Akplogan is Vice President for Technical Engagement at ICANN. With more than 25 years’ experience in the ICT industry (20 specifically in... More >
John CrainChief Security, Stability, and Resiliency OfficerJohn is responsible for establishing strategy, planning and execution for ICANN’s external Security, Stability and Resiliency programs. He works on... More >