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Homeland Security

Secure Protocols

The President’s National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace (2003) states clearly the need to “secure the mechanisms of the Internet by improving protocols and routing.” The Secure Protocols effort works to secure the core Internet services: naming, addressing and routing. The Domain Name System (DNS) is a significant piece of the Internet infrastructure. It maps Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, which are a long series of numbers (216.81.94.72), to recognizable sets of letters, words, or numbers (dhs.gov). In recent years, the Internet community has been working to develop a standard protocol known as Domain Name System Security (DNSSEC) to provide security for all DNS communications. Additionally, the Secure Protocols for the Routing Infrastructure (SPRI) effort aims to ensure the security of the Internet routing infrastructure so that it is reliable in the event of accidents or deliberate malicious behavior.

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