Yesterday the small Principality of Andorra became the latest country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) to be signed with DNSSEC. From this point forward any domains registered under .AD will be able to receive the higher level of protection provided by DNSSEC and start being able to use innovative new tools like the DANE protocol… well, to be clear, all of that added protection can come as soon as the registry operating the .AD ccTLD starts accepting DS records from domain name registrars. What we know today (from sites like this one) is that there is now a DS record for .AD in the root zone of DNS.
I will admit that when I heard the news I wasn’t quite sure where Andorra was other than recalling vaguely it was a very small European state. The Internet filled in that knowledge gap, of course, with long entries in both Wikipedia and the World Fact Book informing me that Andorra is a “micro-state” sandwiched in between France and Spain whose population is around 85,000 people and whose official language is Catalan. It seems to have a fascinating political structure as it is a monarchy with two co-princes, one of whom is the President of France and the other is the Spanish/Roman Catholic Bishop of Urgell. (Yes, I got a bit distracted this morning by my curiosity about Andorra…)
Anyway, congratulations to Andorra for the DNSSEC-signing of .AD. It will now be added to the database for the weekly DNSSEC Deployment Maps that will come out on Monday. It’s great to see the continued increase in the number of signed TLDs!