ISTANBUL – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced its Middle East DNS Forum (MEDNSF) March 24-25 this year in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, hosted by the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC).

There are billions of Internet users of different cultures, languages, economic strata, and education levels. Much of ICANN's work, such as helping mitigate DNS abuse, or raising awareness about Internationalized Domains and Universal Acceptance, is towards protecting these users, and creating an environment that is welcoming for the next billion users. It is also an ICANN focus area to encourage participation, representation, and engagement from people all around the world, for whom access to one global Internet has much to offer.

The Forum features presentations and panel discussions on topics ranging from DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC), and the policy discussions on developments on the DNS ecosystem, as well as the benefits of using the Arabic script on the Internet.

ICANN's Chief Technology Officer David Conrad will give a keynote on the DNS of Tomorrow discussing the current DNS landscape and ecosystem, emerging standards and challenges including the DNS Over HTTPS (DoH) and DNS over TLS (DoT), and other technologies such as the Internet of Things, 5G, and Smart Cities, and how they impact ICANN's work.

To register and view the full agenda, please click here. Remote participation will be available. For more information or inquiries, please contact meac.swg@icann.org.

The Middle East DNS Forum (MEDNSF) was created to help support the regional domain name industry. This initiative was part of ICANN's Engagement Strategy in the Middle East for 2013-2016 [PDF, 984 KB], created by the regional community in 2013. The Forum is aimed at increasing regional stakeholders' knowledge of the Domain Name System. Since its inception in 2014, the Middle East DNS Forum has been held in the UAE (2014), Jordan (2015), Tunisia (2016), Egypt (2017), Turkey (2018), and UAE (2019).