Iron Mountain Inc announced in a press release today that it’s technology division has been chosen by ICANN as the data escrow back-up for the over 900 ICANN accredited registrars.

“The vast majority of ICANN’s accredited registrars offer high levels of service and integrity; however, as we have seen, there is the risk that poorly performing registrars can hurt registrants significantly,” said Dr. Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN. “ICANN has selected Iron Mountain Digital as its escrow agent to help implement the Registrar Data Escrow program, a sensible and practical measure to protect registrants by storing and safeguarding a backup copy of domain name registration data in escrow.”

Data escrowing can be used in any number of situations such as a registrar losing accreditation, failing, going out of business, etc. Data escrowing is required by every registrar as part of the terms of accreditation. The former registrar RegisterFly.com implosion showed the importance of having back-up information. As the company management dealt with internal conflicts, many domain registrants were left in the dark about the future of their domains. ICANN has been working to implement safeguards and measures to prevent any possible future issues with registrar related problems.