Domain pulse 2026: Working together for a secure internet
On 4 and 5 February 2026, the international Domain pulse conference took place in St. Gallen under the title ‘Securely connected – Together for a secure Internet of tomorrow’. Switch, the registry for .ch and .li domain names, organised the two-day event this year.
Domain pulse, the annual domain conference for the DACH region, was once again held in Switzerland on 4 and 5 February 2026. The conference focused on the security of the Internet is and how trust, collaboration and responsibility impact our digital future. Around 250 participants attended presentations and panel discussions with national and international experts.
Working together to protect critical infrastructure
Personal interactions with the international expert at the event raised awareness of the shared responsibility for Internet security. Registries play an important role today, and will continue to do so in the future, by actively connecting all key players in the Internet community. After all, experience, expert opinions and solutions provide important impetus for the work and further development in favour of the security and stability of the Internet.
‘.ch’ is one of Switzerland’s critical infrastructures. Switch therefore has a huge responsibility to operate this part of the global Internet securely and stably. The proper functioning of the Internet is essential for society and the economy. ‘In Switzerland, we use a tried-and-tested approach to prepare for cyber emergencies. The organisations operating critical infrastructures know each other and maintain established collaboration,’ says Urs Eppenberger, Head of Registry at Switch.
Early detection of and defence against cyber threats
In view of the increasing threat situation in cyberspace, several presentations addressed the strategic security of the Internet. The focus was on the work of IT security teams such as Switch CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team), which increase the resilience of the Internet against hacker attacks through global networking and cooperation. Another aspect was the pursuit of digital sovereignty. Initiatives such as the free, public DNS resolver Quad9 or DNS4EU create solutions independent of commercial players and protect privacy. The speakers demonstrated how they can detect and block large-scale waves of fraud and malware campaigns at an early stage by analysing data traces left by attackers in name server infrastructures.
Lastly, experts from Switch CERT made it clear that technical measures alone are not sufficient to ensure comprehensive protection on the Internet. As Internet users, we increasingly have to prepare ourselves for psychological manipulation and cons on the Internet. The team supports Swiss universities and the Internet community in dealing with the ‘human factor’ in information security. In an interactive quiz, the audience tested how well they could recognise social engineering techniques.
The organisers
The registries of the country-specific top-level domains .de (Germany, DENIC eG), .at (Austria, Nic.at), .ch and .li (Switzerland and Liechtenstein, Switch) take turns hosting the Domain pulse conference. The next Domain pulse will take place on 25 and 26 February 2027 at Wolfgangsee near Salzburg.
Further information
Domain pulse 2026 (in German only)
