The NetBeacon Institute
Focused on Reducing DNS Abuse
The Internet is a powerful agent for positive change. At the same time, there are those that use the Internet to achieve their own negative ends. The NetBeacon Institute exists to act against online abuse, keeping the negative side of the public Internet in check to allow the positive side to flourish.
The NetBeacon Institute is tasked with driving outcomes-based initiatives that will create recommended practices, foster collaboration, and develop industry-shared solutions. Two of these solutions, NetBeacon Reporter and NetBeacon MAP, address DNS abuse. NetBeacon Reporter further expands this work by incorporating data on smishing, cryptocurrency and investment scams, and child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to more comprehensively address online abuse.
2021
PIR Creates the NetBeacon Institute
Launched as the DNS Abuse Institute, with the purpose of reducing DNS Abuse.
2022
Two Key Initiatives Launched
NetBeacon Reporter and NetBeacon Measurement & Analytics Platform (MAP)
2023
Individualized Dashboards
2024
Rebrand and Relaunch
2025
Research and Dashboards
NetBeacon Leadership
Graeme Bunton
Graeme has over a decade of DNS policy experience. Prior to NetBeacon, he was Head of Policy for Tucows and served as Chair of the Registrar Stakeholder Group. Graeme was a driving force behind the 'Framework to Address Abuse', a set of guidelines for addressing online harm, adopted by multiple registries and registrars. He helped found the Citizen Lab at University of Toronto, served on the Board of Internet Infrastructure Coalition, and is on the board of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority.
Rowena Schoo
Rowena is Senior Director of Industry Affairs & Policy for the NetBeacon Institute. She previously worked for Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, Nominet UK, and the UK government at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Rowena has over a decade of experience in and around policy, and holds two degrees - Bachelor of Laws (Hons) and Bachelor of Arts (International Relations and Political Science) from the Australian National University.
About the Institute
While progress on DNS Abuse has been made across the industry, not all registries and registrars have access to the same level of resources to combat DNS Abuse. Given this gap and a more general need for innovation, education, and collaboration on DNS Abuse across its many stakeholders, Public Interest Registry (operator of the .ORG gTLD) founded the DNS Abuse Institute in 2021 in furtherance of PIR’s nonprofit mission. The Institute is fully funded and supported by PIR, and its mission to reduce DNS Abuse and empower the DNS Community aligns with PIR.
The work of the Institute is outwardly focused and there is functional separation between the Institute and PIR which ensures the Institute is empowered to make independent decisions, and plays no role in addressing abuse issues in .ORG, or any other PIR TLD. The Institute was renamed in 2024 to the NetBeacon Institute and continues to serve as an independent, objective, shared resource to help the community identify and report DNS Abuse, establish best practices, fund research on DNS Abuse, and share data. It works closely with all DNS Abuse stakeholders in the fight against DNS Abuse, including but not limited to technical and security organizations, academic organizations, registries, and registrars.
Advisory Council
The Institute maintains a diverse Advisory Council with expert representation from interested stakeholders related to DNS Abuse, such as gTLD registries, ccTLD registries, registrars, security researchers, and academics on issues related to DNS Abuse.
Current Advisory Council members include:
Valued Partners
Public Interest Registry
PIR is a non-profit organization created by the Internet Society (ISOC), originally to manage the .ORG domain.
PIR serves the public interest online. Its globally diverse team is committed to providing a stable online platform to enable people to do good things.
Clean DNS
The Institute partnered with the cybersecurity and investigative professionals at CleanDNS to develop the NetBeacon Reporter platform.
KOR Labs
The Institute partners with KOR Labs for the delivery of NetBeacon MAP. KOR Labs is led by Dr Maciej Korczynski, a professor at Grenoble Alpes University in France.