{"id":201788,"date":"2023-11-02T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-02T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/?p=201788"},"modified":"2025-11-19T21:12:52","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T21:12:52","slug":"achieving-greater-heights-for-manrs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/blog\/2023\/11\/achieving-greater-heights-for-manrs\/","title":{"rendered":"Achieving Greater Heights for MANRS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today, we\u2019re excited to announce a new phase for Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (MANRS)<\/a>. The Internet Society has partnered with the Global Cyber Alliance (GCA)<\/a>, an international nonprofit specializing in addressing cybersecurity challenges at scale by mobilizing stakeholders toward collective action. As part of this partnership, the GCA will take on the functions of the MANRS secretariat and operations, while the Internet Society will maintain significant funding, advocacy, and training functions over the next five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this partnership, MANRS will continue to achieve greater heights and be further established as the globally recognized benchmark for global routing security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How It Started<\/h4>\n\n\n
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In 2014, the Internet Society recognized the industry\u2019s willingness for collaborative agreement on best practices for routing security and helped initial participants to capture and share those practices in what became MANRS. Since then, the Internet Society has advocated globally for MANRS uptake, encouraged industry collaboration, supported the evolution of the norms, and evolved to become the secretariat of MANRS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward a decade, and MANRS has grown from nine original operators to a community of more than 1,000 participants ranging from small enterprise networks to Tier-1 transit providers, from IXPs of various sizes to content delivery network (CDN) and cloud providers publicly professing their commitment to the MANRS requirements. MANRS is now globally recognized as a beacon for securing global routing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As MANRS matured, so did the community-led governance model with the establishment of the community-elected Steering Committee. The Internet Society has proudly served as the secretariat, in addition to supporting the initiative with both financial and staff resources as well as operations support to ensure MANRS\u2019 growth. In 2019 the MANRS Observatory, a conformance measurement tool for routing security, was launched. Since then, many new features have been added to the MANRS Observatory, such as alerts and monthly MANRS readiness reports. Growth also happened through capacity building, and over the years, thousands of network engineers have gone through online courses, virtual labs, and on-site workshops. In 2020, the Internet Society, together with the MANRS community, launched the Mentors and Ambassadors program promoting routing security in the areas of research, policy, and training. Now it’s in its fourth year with three Mentors and nine Ambassadors from across the globe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Community efforts like MANRS are rare, and their success difficult. Without constant development and care, they may stagnate and disappear, but MANRS has generated a spirit of community collaboration and motivated participants and partners to ensure its success. Along with strong governance and community involvement, MANRS evolution needs financial and operational sustainability. For quite some time, we at the Internet Society were looking for a model to achieve the latter. GCA\u2019s willingness to step up and more actively support MANRS by partnering with the Internet Society presents an excellent opportunity for growth.\u201d<\/div>