The aim of DDoS Open Threat Signaling (DOTS) is to develop a standards based approach for the real time signaling of DDoS related telemetry and threat handling data between elements concerned with attack mitigation. The elements may be described as: * On-premise DDoS mitigation platforms * Service provider DDoS mitigation platforms * Other devices/platforms with network perspective engaged in traffic analysis The elements may be chained for communication to construct a larger collaborative system. These elements may be communicating inter-domain or intra-domain over links that may be congested by attack traffic resulting in hostile conditions for connection oriented approaches and more generalized signaling and telemetry solutions. Robustness under these conditions is paramount while ensuring appropriate regard for authentication, authorization, privacy and data integrity. Elements may be deployed as part of a wider strategy incorporating multiple points of detection and mitigation, both on premise or service provider based. Should mitigation need to move between elements in the chain, then effective signaling of telemetry and current threat handling is essential. Feedback between participating elements is required for increased awareness supporting effective decision making. The WG will, where appropriate, reuse or extend existing standard protocols and mechanisms, for instance IPFIX and its templating mechanism. The WG may coordinate with other working groups and initiatives that compliment the DOTS effort E.G. SACM, MILE, SUPA, I2NSF. The charter of the working group is to produce one or more standards track specifications to provide for this open signaling in the DDoS problem space. While the resulting standards should be designed so they apply to network security applications beyond DDoS mitigation, this working group will focus on DDoS mitigation. This streamlined focus of the charter is intended to lead to an earlier result due to community interests in having such capability in a short timeframe. The specification(s) produced by the WG will include a standard mechanism for authentication and authorization, for data integrity, and for providing for privacy in operation. The WG will produce the following deliverables and milestones: * Document or Documents describing the problem space, use cases, protocol requirements and other qualifying information as the WG sees fit. * Document or Documents specifying a protocol and associated data models to address the WG stated goal.