.at is the chosen home for many Austrians online. In fact, 936,857 .at domains are registered to postal addresses in the country – 72.6 % of all .at domains out there. But which towns, cities and districts lead the way when it comes to domain names? To mark the 30th anniversary of the .at domain, we went off in search of answers. The good news right away: there is not a single district in Austria without at least one .at registration. Even tiny places like Namlos, Tschanigraben, Gramais and Kaisers – each with a population of below 70 – are home to owners of .at domains.

Promoting the Internet in Austria is one of the goals enshrined in the articles of incorporation of the Internet Foundation Austria, nic.at’s owner. Over recent decades the Internet has not only become an essential element of numerous business processes, but is also an integral part of many people’s daily lives. As a result, we have to ensure that we are ideally placed to meet and counter threats and security risks as they emerge. A national CERT as an independent information hub presented itself as the ideal opportunity to leverage the available synergies while promoting the goals of the foundation. The greatest challenge that we faced was establishing an effective team to rapidly embed us in national and international networks and help us establish the level of trust required for quality information exchange. As face to face contact and direct communications are an essential part of this, a significant amount of our initial work focused on building up a network of dependable contacts at home and abroad, rather than the technical side of things.

Stopline was an independent initiative set up by the Austrian Internet service providers to combat illegal content online, after images of child abuse were discovered on the server of an Austrian host provider. ISPA (then newly founded), nic.at, representatives of the police reporting centres, legal experts and other national stakeholders were involved in establishing Stopline. The challenge at the time was to raise awareness of illegal content online and publicise the existence of the new reporting centre without demonising the Internet as a whole.