APAC DNS Forum 2025

By Peter Lowe Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025

The APAC DNS Forum took place on Thursday and Friday, May 8-9th of 2025 in Hanoi, Vietnam. I attended, initially with the intention of being on a panel about DNS Abuse, but unfortunately due to some unexpected changes I wasn’t able to join them on stage.

However, the forum itself was a rewarding and valuable event to be at - in particular because it highlighted some of the differences between the Western and APAC communities. There were a number of interesting talks and panels that showcased showcased projects and points of views, but as usual a lot of the value came from the chats had between sessions.

I met a ton of different people (greatly helped by Shoko Nakai from JP-CERT who introduced me to many of them) - from TWNIC, JPNIC, PwC, ICANN, DNS-OARC, Dot AU, and more, and have a long list of followups to make after having initial chats about potential partnerships with, and new members of, FIRST.

One of the most common questions I received when talking to people as the DNS Abuse Ambassador for FIRST, is about how organisations could go about sharing data with us. A lot of people want to increase the value of their datasets by making it available to people who’ll use it to protect others online - ie, CERTs, CSIRTs, security teams, etc. We have several ad-hoc data sharing setups in place, but nothing formalised - and this is something that we’ve actively begun to work on since I got back.

As mentioned earlier, one of the more interesting aspects of the forum was seeing and hearing the views on DNS from the APAC community. A good example was one quote I heard from a panel: “Most people in Asia PAC don’t even know what ICANN is”. There’s also some fascinating setups in places like Indonesia, where there are 1000s of ISPs who all need to be part of APJII, who do IP allocation and provide other services there - like a kind of local IANA; and seeing how other registries like TWNIC approach trust and authentication with domain registration was also fascinating. I have followups with people from both organisations.

Some other topics that came up were AI, and how it might change the DNS world - the general impression I got from others was that it’s “not ready yet”, although personally I’m waiting to see if that changes. And how NIS2 is impacting DNS services, in particular registries and registrars. Another thing to keep an eye on, especially for global organisations.

There was considerable interest whenever I brought up the work that the DNS Abuse SIG was doing, in particular the DNS Abuse Matrix - which I was told by several people was being used as a reference when discussing things internally. That was really motivating to hear, because it’s always good to hear that the hard work we’re doing has a real-world impact.

As a side note, the location was pretty spectacular - the Landmark72 building is the highest building in Hanoi and there were some great views of the city from the 71st floor. It was well organised and the food was also pretty spot on.

Overall, I’m very glad I got to represent FIRST, spread awareness of our organisation, and gain some useful insight into how minds work on that side of the world. Although I’m slightly daunted by the number of followups I need to make!