Equipping backbone networks with high-performance and secure DNS resolution infrastructures – Works

A new funding opportunity is available under the CEF programme: “Backbone networks for pan-European cloud federation (CEF-DIG-2021-CLOUD)”.

This topic will support the deployment of a recursive European DNS resolver service infrastructure (hereafter DNS4EU) serving socio-economic drivers, public, corporate and residential internet end-users in the EU, and offering very high reliability and protection against global cybersecurity threats and those specific to the EU (e.g. phishing in EU languages). This is a key policy action announced in the 2020 “Joint Communication: The EU’s Cybersecurity Strategy for the Digital Decade”. Such a critical service infrastructure is currently not available at European level with the level of performance, resilience, security and privacy envisaged, and the market will not invest in it alone given the lack of a business case (DNS resolution is normally provided for free). As stated the EU’s Cybersecurity Strategy, citizens and organisations in the EU increasingly rely on a few public DNS resolvers operated by non-EU entities. The deployment of DNS4EU aims to address such consolidation of DNS resolution in the hands of few companies, which renders the resolution process itself vulnerable in case of significant events affecting one major provider. Moreover the lack of significant EU investment in the field hampers the development of infrastructures that favour the detection and filtering of local cyber-threats that nonetheless could have significant socio-economic impacts. In addition, the processing of DNS data can have an impact on privacy and data protection rights.

More information on this funding opportunity and its deadline is available here. 

Source: European Commission