As part of the global effort to improve the security of DNS, amongst other registries Nominet are implementing DNSSEC in the zones under their management. DNSSEC prevents the interception of and tampering with DNS queries between nameservers, making the Internet safer. You can find a full explanation of what DNSSEC is and what it does at http://www.nominet.org.uk/tech/dnssec.

As announced at the .uk registrar conference in November, the first phase of this programme is to add DNSSEC information to the top-level .uk domain.  They will implement this on Monday 1 March 2010, and you can read details of how this process will work at

http://www.nominet.org.uk/news/latest?contentId=7075

These changes are being made as the first phase of deploying DNSSEC and should have no impact on your systems.

They will provide details of the next phases of their DNSSEC roll-out, which will include signing .co.uk and other SLDs, over the coming months, together with updates and guidance on the benefits and impacts of DNSSEC for your customers.