Dotkeepers 2025 recap

2025: A Year of Regulation, Resilience, and Preparation

The Next gTLD Round Confirmed:

The timeline for the next round of top-level domains was officially confirmed this year.

Official Date: The application window for the New gTLD Program: Next Round is:

Application Submission Window Opens:30 April 2026 (no later than 23:59 UTC).

Application Submission Window Closes:12 August 2026 (at 23:59 UTC).

• Strategic Priority (TMCH): As this date approaches, we strongly recommend that clients register their trademarks in the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH). This applies not only to organizations planning to apply for their own .brand TLD, but to any brand seeking protection. TMCH registration is the only way to gain access to the Sunrise Period, allowing you to secure exact-match domains under new and relevant generic TLDs before they are released to the general public.

Email Security
Following earlier moves by Google and Yahoo, Microsoft introduced new requirements in 2025 for high-volume senders in Outlook and Microsoft 365. This marks an important step toward a more secure email ecosystem and reduced phishing, spoofing, and brand impersonation.

What Changed:
 High-volume senders must now meet stricter authentication requirements, including:

• Configured SPF and DKIM
• A published DMARC policy (minimum p=none, enforcement recommended)
• Alignment between sending domains and authentication mechanisms

Organizations that fail to comply risk reduced deliverability or blocked emails, directly affecting customer communication, trust, and revenue.

Infrastructure Reliability: The Wake-Up Call

In 2025, several events highlighted the fragility of the internet’s backbone and reinforced the importance of redundancy and secondary DNS solutions.

Hyperscaler Outages: We saw significant disruptions from major providers. These incidents caused widespread “500 errors” and downtime for major global platforms, proving that reliance on a single provider is a significant risk.

• Key Takeaway: These incidents reinforced the “cost of downtime” discussions we initiated earlier in the year. To learn more, watch our webinar with IBM NS1 on the real impact of downtime on businesses, here!

Technical Shifts: The Defined Path to 47-Day Certificates

In April 2025, the CA/Browser Forum formally approved the roadmap to reduce SSL/TLS certificate lifetimes. Throughout the year, we worked closely with clients to prepare for this confirmed timeline:

• March 15, 2026: Validity drops to 200 days.
• March 15, 2027: Validity drops to 100 days.
• March 15, 2029: Final reduction to 47 days.
• he Hidden Challenge (DCV): Crucially, Domain Control Validation (DCV) reuse periods will follow this downward trend, eventually shrinking to just 10 days in 2029. This means simply automating certificate renewal is no longer enough; companies must implement DNS automation to handle these frequent validation challenges required every few weeks.

Dotkeeper Team

Finally, we celebrated the people behind our technology.

• Team Expansion: We welcomed new colleagues Martin Lindgren Carlsson and Stina Hjerpe to the dotkeeper team. Get to know Martin & Stina!
• Behind the Tech: Martin plays a key role in driving our technical solutions forward. Here’s a closer look at the expertise behind the systems protecting your digital assets. See the man behind the machnie here!