BITS

BITS is the division of technology policy from the Financial Services Roundtable. It represents 100 of the largest financial services companies that provide insurance, investment products or banking services.

About BITS

Created in 1996 as the entity created within the Financial Services Roundtable that will help the members better understand and collaborate for the newest technologies. The founder of BITS was Frank Wobst, CEO of Huntington Bancshares. BITS’ first CEO was Catherine Allen. Today, it is led by Paul Smocer.

BITS and ICANN

ICANN leads an application process for obtaining more global top level domains such as .secure or .bank. BITS as the entity of technology from the Financial Services, published a set of regulations for new top level domains such as .bank which cover up to 31 items related to law enforcement, security of data or registrar relations. Although these regulations should be applied on a voluntary basis by applicants for a gTLD, BITS will enforce this as being mandatory for domains related to financial services. These domains are called fTLD. BITS addressed an official letter to ICANN in order to announce that the implementation of the regulations will be mandatory. Within the ICANN’s Applicant Guidebook does not state that it is mandatory for applicants to apply these regulations, but that they should respect the general security expected from gTLD. The regulations specified by BITS should be implemented until December 20. It is up to ICANN board to find a way for implementing them.