CZ.NIC

Type:	Non-Profit
Industry:	Registry
Founded:	1998
Headquarters:	Americka 23, 120 00 Praha 2
Country:	Czech Republic
Website:	NIC.CZ
Facebook:	CZ.NIC
Twitter:	@CZ_NIC
Key People
Ondrej Filip, CEO Martin Peterka, Operations Manager Ondřej Surý, R&D Manager Jaromir Talir, Technical Manager

CZ.NIC is an interest association of legal persons and the administrator of the .CZ national domain. Its main activity is administration of .CZ domain names, ensuring of the .CZ top-level domain operation and education in the area of domain names.

The employees of the association work on individual projects spreading the DNSSEC technology, developing the domain administration system and mojeID service and promoting new technologies beneficial to the Internet infrastructure in the Czech Republic. Since January 2011, CZ.NIC has also collaborated on operating the national security team CSIRT.CZ

CZ.NIC operates a learning center CZ.NIC Academy and carries out its own researches under the CZ.NIC Laboratories brand. In the Laboratories it develops original tools for the development of the Internet infrastructure and analyzes online security-related problems. CZ.NIC is a member of EURid, the organization administering the European .EU domain, as well as of other international companies with similar specialization (CENTR, ccNSO, etc.).

Key projects of the CZ.NIC Association

TURRIS

A service that helps users to protect their home networks by using a special router. In addition to normal home router functions, it is also able to analyze network traffic and identify suspicious data streams. If such data stream is detected, the router alerts the Turris central that, by comparing data from other routers connected to Turris, evaluates the detected threat. If an attack is detected, updates are created and distributed throughout the Turris network to help protect all other users.

DNSSEC

CZ.NIC has been using the DNSSEC security technology since 2008. Czech Republic was the fifth country to introduce this security technology. At present, the Czech national domain is among the ccTLDs with the highest use of DNSSEC.

FRED

FRED (Free Registry for ENUM and Domain) is a registration system for domain administration, developed by employees of CZ.NIC as open source. More information, including installation packages, can be found at http://fred.nic.cz. The software can be freely used, modified and redistributed under the conditions laid down by the appropriate license. The FRED registration system is being used by Angola, Tanzania, the Faroe Islands, Costa Rica, Estonia, Albania and Macedonia. It is running in a test mode in several other countries.

BIRD

The open source routing daemon BIRD was developed at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Prague, as a school project of three students (including Ondřej Filip, the current CEO of CZ.NIC). The most important moment in development of the project so far came about in 2009, when BIRD became one of the first priority activities of the CZ.NIC Laboratories. Examples of the peering centers utilizing BIRD include the American PAIX, the Moscow MSK-IX, the Frankfurt DE-CIX and the London LINX.

mojeID

MojeID is a service that allows users of the Czech Internet to use single login data (username and password) for logging into different websites and web services. MojeID can be used for all services that support specifically the mojeID service or at least the OpenID technology.

Knot DNS

Knot DNS is a powerful authoritative DNS server supporting all major DNS protocol functions including zone transfers, dynamic updates and DNSSEC extension.

National security team CSIRT.CZ

Based on the agreement between the Czech Ministry of the Interior and CZ.NIC, since January 2011 the CZ.NIC Association has coordinated the national security team CSIRT.CZ. It participates in resolving incidents related to cyber security in networks operating in the Czech Republic.

CZ.NIC Laboratories

A development and research institute of the CZ.NIC Association that is engaged in research on the Internet, Internet protocols, network operation analysis, passive and active monitoring and design of prototypes for further development within CZ.NIC. The work of CZ.NIC Laboratories focuses on the benefit of the local Internet community; however, the scope of its work is international.

Country Code Names Supporting Organization. Develops and recommends to the Board global policies relating to country-code top-level domains (ICANN Bylaws).