Communications Commission: There will be no internet outage, but there may be very limited impact on entities that have not updated their systems

The Communications and Information Technology Commission confirmed today the inaccuracy of what was circulated in some media outlets regarding an internet outage on October 11, 2018, stating that there will be no internet outage at all, but some entities that have not updated - for more than a year - their systems related to the Domain Name System (DNS) may be affected. The Commission added that it has, more than once, notified all licensed telecommunications service providers and a large number of government entities, banks, and major companies in the Kingdom of the importance of ensuring their readiness for this change by updating their systems to use the updated version of the encryption key for the Root DNS Servers to ensure continuity of service and the ability to access local and global websites.

This change, related to the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) protocol, is the first of its kind carried out by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) - responsible for managing the internet's main domain name servers - and was originally scheduled to be implemented last year but was postponed to ensure that the effects of the change are limited; this in turn provided entities around the world with additional time to ensure their systems were updated, which falls within the tasks and responsibility of the information technology and information security departments in those entities.

It is worth noting that the Commission held a number of training programs and workshops on the DNSSEC protocol, benefiting more than 220 participants, which contributed to raising awareness among entities within the Kingdom.