New .insurance domain names expected later this year: McCarthy Tetrault

Insurance-specific Internet domain names are anticipated to become available later this year, suggested a recent blog post from a partner and associate of law firm McCarthy Tetrault.

The blog post on Saturday from partner Ana Badour from McCarthy Tetrault’s Toronto office and associate Sophie Gupta from the Montreal office noted that in 2008, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, a nonprofit organization overseeing global IP address allocation, began the process of creating and auctioning new top-level domains. Since then, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has confirmed a number of new ‘generic’ top level domains (gTLD), including two new “community-based gTLDs” for the financial services community: <.bank> and <.insurance>.

The blog noted that fTLD Registry Services, LLC (fTLD), an organization founded and operated by a consortium of banks and insurance companies and their trade associations, was granted the right to operate <.bank> on Sept. 25, 2014 and <.insurance> on Feb. 19 of this year.

“What sets <.bank> and <.insurance> apart from other gTLDs, including <.com> and <.ca>, is that they will offer a trusted, protected and secure internet environment for participating organizations and the customers they serve,” the blog said. “Only verified members of the banking and insurance communities, as applicable, will be able to register such domain names. No proxy or anonymous registrations will be allowed and, prior to activation, all registrations will be subject to a comprehensive verification process conducted by Symantec.”

fTLD announced earlier this month an agreement with Architelos, Inc. to provide security monitoring services for the <.bank> and <.insurance> domains. “In this role, Architelos will add an additional layer of protection to the new domains by implementing its NameSentry service to monitor for domain name abuse schemes including phishing, distribution of malware, use of botnets and spamming,” Architelos said in a statement on June 2. “The partnership with Architelos is designed to help increase the level of trust consumers place in <.bank> and <.insurance> to protect their personal information,” Craig Schwartz, fTLD managing director was quoted as saying.

Registrants of <.bank> and <.insurance> domain names will also be required to comply with a number of additional controls, including enhanced encryption standards, options for distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection and mitigation via real-time monitoring and detection, email authentication and multi-factor authentication and escalated compliance and enforcement requirements and abuse monitoring, the blog said.

Registration will be on a first come, first served basis, with no automatic transfer from a <.com> domain name to <.bank> or to <.insurance>. Organizations must instead re-register.

The <.bank> domain names will generally become available for registration to verified members of the banking community on June 24, the blog said. However, founding members of fTLD will be able to register beforehand. In addition, verified members who have registered their trademarks with ICANN’s Trademark Clearinghouse prior to May 13 will benefit from a 30-day “sunrise period” beginning May 18 and ending June 17, during which time they will have an advance opportunity to register domain names that are exact matches to their registered trademarks, the blog said.

The timing for <.insurance> domain name registration has not yet been released by fTLD, “although it is expected that such domain names will become available later this year,” the blog said.