By the end of next year, you’ll have reassurance that every U.S. government Web page is really that of the appropriate agency.

That’s because the feds have launched the largest-ever rollout of a new authentication mechanism for the Internet’s DNS. All federal agencies are deploying DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) on the .gov top-level domain, and some expect that once that rollout is complete, banks and other businesses might be encouraged to follow suit for their sites.

DNSSEC prevents hackers from hijacking Web traffic and redirecting it to bogus sites. It prevents spoofing attacks by allowing Web sites to verify their domain names and corresponding IP addresses using digital signatures and public-key encryption.

The action is the result of a memorandum issued by the Office of Managment and Budget in August. To read the DNSSEC Deployment Initiative, click here.