How can you use the latest open Internet standards to make web servers as secure and as fast as possible? How can you ensure your web site is available to everyone across the global network of networks?

Please join me on Wednesday, February 26, 2020, from 13:00 – 14:00 UTC in our first InterCommunity 2020 event to learn about the Internet Society’s new “Open Standards Everywhere” project.

As I explained in a post on the Internet Society’s blog, this new Open Standards Everywhere project is part of our Action Plan 2020 work to build a bigger, stronger Internet for everyone.

The project began out of our own work to ensure our corporate sites used the latest and most secure open standards, such as TLS, HSTS, IPv6, DNSSEC and more. In doing that work, we found it was very challenging to find simple and easy-to-use instructions to secure common web servers. There is a HUGE amount of information out there, but it’s often hard to sort through and figure out what exactly is needed. Our goal with this project is simple:

• Build a set of reference web servers showing best practices using apache and nginx, with and without a content delivery network (CDN).
• Document exactly what we had to do to implement the standards, pointing to other excellent resources as well.
• Promote that documentation, along with additional resources explaining why these standards are so important for website operators.
• Lead by example and work to make sure all ISOC-operated sites use these latest standards.

To define what is a “good” set of standards that should be implemented by a web site, we are using the Internet.nl test suite. As an experiment we are also developing the documentation using GitHub.

I will be explaining all of this and more during our InterCommunity 2020 event tomorrow. Please register and join us! (It will be recorded for later viewing if you cannot attend live.)

P.S. In this first year, the project is focusing on web servers. In subsequent years we intend to focus on mail servers, time servers, communications servers, and more. The end goal is to get open standards everywhere, and using different server types as a way to get there.