Updates

What's happening around .gov

February 8th: Updated requirements for federal executive branch agencies via OMB Memorandum 23-10. The update details how domains are requested and which may be approved.
January 31st: The .gov zone file is available via ICANN’s Centralized Zone Data Service. Learn more in last September’s blog post.

September 14th: Making infrastructure less invisible. Invisible consistency tends to be a trait of good infrastructure, but it doesn’t have to be hidden.

July 21st: About .gov, for elections. We’ve added a page to help the election community learn about .gov.
June 30: A request for information. We released an RFI to gather feedback on our objectives for .gov’s next phase.
April 27: A new day for .gov. Domains are available to qualifying U.S.-based government organizations at no cost, and the registration requirements have been updated.
March 8: .gov is moving to CISA. The .gov TLD is moving to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

June 21: An intent to preload. HSTS preloading can protect individual domains names, but it can also be applied to a top-level domain.

July 17: DNS change notifications. Authorized .gov domain contacts will receive a system-generated email when a change is made to their DNS in the .gov registrar.

October 29: GSA steps up security for .gov. This guest post on digital.gov summarized many of this year’s activities.
October 1: Doing the 2-step. We added a new feature – and made it mandatory – to improve the security of .gov registrar accounts.
August 21: Opt-in to preload your domains. New .gov domains can opt-in to HSTS preloading at the time of registration.
April 17: Increasing the security of passwords. We minimize the threat of password reuse by ensuring that passwords found in data taken from past public breaches cannot be used.

January 19: Automatic HTTPS enforcement for new executive branch .gov domains. A guest post on cio.gov. As new executive branch domains are registered, they will be submitted to web browsers for “preloading.”