A year of effort and recognition

2019 figures are in line with previous years. The number of registrations and renewals came close to our expectations and we still recorded slight growth for both. This is obviously a very positive situation for DNS Belgium as a registry in a mature market.

Sustainable chain management

2019 was a very successful year for DNS Belgium in the field of sustainable chain management and corporate social responsibility. In the beginning of 2019, the Environmental Information Point for SMEs (MiK) named DNS Belgium the climate ambassador for Vlaams-Brabant. We thank this title to our ambitious climate programme and the fact that we became climate neutral two years earlier than expected. Thanks to DNS Belgium's efforts in the field of climate, cybersecurity, international cooperation, transfer of knowledge and education, Voka, the Flemish network of enterprises, awarded us a Sustainable Business Charter.

The fact that the European advocacy organisation for ccTLDs put us in the spotlight for our security and knowledge-sharing initiatives with registries from the other countries, was particularly gratifying.

Digital awareness

DNS Belgium kept winning awards in 2019. Feweb gave our new website the ‘best website of the year' award. And the fact that our website also received the AnySurfer-label fits completely with our objective to make the internet accessible to everyone of course.

Together with our partner Close the Gap we also launched a new non-profit organisation, i.e. DigitalForYouth.be in 2019. The goal of this non-profit organisation is to teach young people between the ages of 6 and 24 digital skills. This can range from using digital media to programming software. DigitalForYouth.be does this by making refurbished second-hand laptops freely available to organisations that teach young people digital skills.

To further stimulate digital awareness among young people, we contributed to the Ava & Trix teaching package. Its mission is to make children – particularly girls – between the ages of 8 and 11 enthusiastic about science. The teaching package stimulates high-quality education, gender equality and innovation which is why it is offered to schools and individual players for free.  DNS Belgium worked with Ava & Trix on an episode about the internet.

The fact that these efforts are bearing fruit was apparent from the market survey we conducted. In young people, entrepreneurs and domain name holders particularly, the trust in, and the knowledge about, the internet is considerable. The most reliable and popular domain name extension for them is still .be.

Leader in security

As always, special attention was paid to internet security in 2019. We took various actions in the field of fraud prevention. This allowed us to proactively remove more than 5,700 domain names from the .be-zone. We aim to offer surfers the most fraud-free internet possible and  actively cooperate with the relevant public authorities to achieve this.