ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom opened the organization’s 40th meeting in Silicon Valley citing DNSSEC as a major theme in his keynote presentation (119KB PDF). Following are his DNSSEC-related remarks:

Perhaps our most significant security achievement is the ongoing implementation of DNSSEC. With strong community support, it is being vigorously deployed around the world, at a pace that exceeds our most optimistic projections.

We encourage companies to deploy DNSSEC on their DNS infrastructure – in effect, to turn DNSSEC validation “on” and sign their company’s domain names.

In less than a year since the root was signed, today we have 76 top-level domains signed and in a few weeks, .COM – with almost 100 million domains names – will also be signed.

With the root zone signed, the number of domains using DNSSEC will accelerate. Large ISPs such as Comcast are deploying DNSSEC to provide additional security for their customers, and major equipment vendors such as Cisco are looking at building it into their products. This is a major win.

And finally, DNSSEC could help secure more than just domain names – perhaps email, web sites, identities, communications and programs – bringing seamless and trustworthy communication across organizational and national borders.

For those of you who may not be fully familiar with DNSSEC, there will be a session for newcomers today at four o’clock.

The Latin American and Caribbean TLD Association has set a target of 50 percent signed TLDs in Latin America by the end of this year. “2011 will be the year of DNSSEC for LAC TLD,” according to its general manager.

We want to hear that commitment echoed around the world.