Danny McPherson leads Verisign’s technology and security organizations. He is responsible for Verisign's corporate and production infrastructure, platforms, services, engineering, and operations, as well as information and corporate security. He has actively participated in internet operations, research, and standardization since the early 1990s, including serving on the Internet Architecture Board and chairing an array of Internet Engineering Task Force and other working groups and committees. He has authored several books and numerous patents, internet protocol standards, and network and security research publications.
Prior to joining Verisign in 2010, Danny was Chief Security Officer at Arbor Networks, where he developed solutions to detect and mitigate cyberattacks. He also performed pioneering research on internet infrastructure evolution, as well as botnet and malware collection and analysis. Before that, he held technical leadership positions in architecture, engineering, and operations with Amber Networks, Qwest Communications, Genuity, MCI Communications and the U.S. Army Signal Corps.
Verisign recently published a technical report on new generic top-level domain (gTLD) security and stability considerations. The initial objective of the report was to assess for Verisign’s senior management our own operational preparedness for new gTLDs, as both a Registry Service Provider for approximately 200 strings, as well as a direct applicant for 14 new gTLDs (including 12 internationalized domain name (IDN) transliterations of .com and .net). The goal was to help ensure our teams, infrastructure and processes are prepared for the pilot and general pre-delegation testing (PDT) exercises, various bits of which are underway, and the subsequent production delegations and launch of new gTLDs shortly thereafter.
