Protecting the UK's critical infrastructure: An interview with Nominet Cyber MD David Carroll

Nominet worked with NCSC to protect the health services during the pandemic

For more than 25 years, Nominet has run one of the largest internet registries in the world. Utilising its heritage in the Domain Name System (DNS) it developed the cyber division and Nominet Protective DNS. Nominet delivers the Protective Domain Name Service (PDNS) on behalf of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) in the UK. It protects an estimated 6 million end users and more than 900 organisations, in addition to the Health and Social Care Network (HSCN), which was brought under the protection of PDNS during the pandemic. Nominet Cyber now delivers Protective DNS to secure vital public services across the world.

The company been shortlisted for the UK IT awards in the Best Security, Defence or Law Enforcement IT Project of the Year category for its work with NCSC. Managing Director David Carroll tells us more, and explains what the UK IT awards mean to his company and the industry as a whole.

Computing: Tell us about what makes Nominet stand out from the crowd

David Carroll: Nominet is a public benefit company and protecting public services through Protective DNS is one part of how the company operates within the public interest. Nominet also runs the trusted .UK Registry, which is relied upon by millions of businesses, resolves disputes, and actively tackles online crime. As an operator of critical national infrastructure, it is committed to delivering a safe, secure and resilient infrastructure that underpins the UK Registry and government services. This gives Nominet Cyber unrivalled expertise and experience to deliver Protective DNS on a national scale for governments globally.

What one company achievement in the last 12 months are you most proud of?

In the last year we worked closely with the NCSC to support the health sector during the pandemic. This began with blocking malicious domains related to Covid-19 and prioritising the onboarding of NHS Trusts, notably Nightingale hospitals. Following this, onboarding of the entire Health and Social Care Network (HSCN) was accelerated (within 24 hours), after an alert from CISA that healthcare organisations were being targeted in the US.

We also developed a new solution with NCSC to protect end users when they were not connected through a traditional enterprise network in an office environment. With so many people finding themselves working remotely during the pandemic, PDNS Digital Roaming proved invaluable. A number of NHS Trusts and organisations across central and local government are now using PDNS Digital Roaming to protect their employees.

We're extremely proud that we were able to play our part in defending some of the UK's most critical services from cyber attack during the pandemic.

What are you working on this year?

While we continue to expand the reach of PDNS in close collaboration with the NCSC, we are also seeing PDNS used in new ways. The insight PDNS was able to offer in the response to the attack on SolarWinds, for example. Not only were we able to alert those that may have been at risk from the attack, we could reassure those that were not affected. This informed analysis on the extent of the incident across the UK public sector and provided intelligence on UK cyber maturity.

Why are events like the UK IT Industry Awards important to the IT industry?

It's easy to forget those that are powering our increasingly digitalised society. More and more we have an expectation that things should just ‘work'. As those at the heart of this world, we need to celebrate our advances and congratulate our peers, events such as the UK IT Industry Awards are the perfect opportunity to do just that.