Australian Bankers’ Association welcomes security assessment
of new Internet domain names

Sydney, 22 June, 2009: The Australian Bankers’ Association (ABA) is supporting the work of the global financial services industry* on reviewing proposals to change Internet domain names.
 
The debate over extending domain names is being discussed this week in Sydney at the 35th public meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

ICANN – the Internet’s domain name system manager – is proposing to expand the number of top level domains beyond the current 21 generic names, adding for example, .bank to the existing .com.

While the Australian Bankers’ Association welcomes the discussion, any move to new domain names needs serious consideration given security, branding and cost implications.

David Bell, Chief Executive of the Australian Bankers’ Association, said: “In this respect, we welcome ICANN’s recent correspondence with the global financial services industry requesting feedback on these issues and we will collaborate with them.”

The American Bankers Association, BITS/Financial Services Roundtable and the Australian Bankers’ Association will be attending the ICANN conference and taking part in discussions.