ICANN CEO to step down

The head of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers — the low-profile nonprofit organization tasked with managing top-level Internet domains — is calling it quits.

Rod Beckstrom, ICANN’s president and CEO, announced that after he finishes his current term, which ends in July 2012, he’ll step down.

The former director of the National Cybersecurity Center in the Homeland Security Department, Beckstrom was elected to his ICANN post in 2009

While there, Beckstrom oversaw the negotiation and signing of the Affirmation of Commitments, which shifted ICANN’s oversight from strictly the U.S. government to the world, the corporation said in a release.

Also, the introduction of internationalized domain names under Beckstrom’s watch has allowed millions of Internet users to access the Web entirely in their primary language script.

A program to launch new generic top-level domains was approved in June and will launch in the next year.

This story is part of Federal News Radio’s daily Cybersecurity Update. For more cybersecurity news, click here.

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