The General Services Administration (GSA) is transferring oversight responsibilities for the “.gov” domain to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in a move that will take effect in April 2021.
CISA said Monday it will manage the top-level domain (TLD) which covers all branches of the federal government including states, counties, cities, tribes and territories. The move comes as part of efforts to comply with the DOTGOV Act of 2020 which directs oversight of the TLD to fall under CISA’s purview.
Eric Goldstein, executive assistant director for the cybersecurity division at CISA, said that using a .gov domain provides security benefits such as two-factor authentication and notifications on changes to DNS activity.
“We’ll endeavor to make the TLD more secure for the American public and harder for malicious actors to impersonate,” he said.