DNS Filtering
WHAT IS DNS?
DNS is an IP address lookup system used by everything that touches the internet: computers, phones, tablets, servers, web servers, and more. When you know someone’s name and don’t know their phone number, there’s a directory you can use to look them up. DNS works just like that, except that the directory is distributed across tens of thousands of servers all over the world.
DNS HISTORY
When the guys that designed the internet designed DNS, they didn’t imagine there would be security concerns, so there was no security built in to DNS. That lack of security has caused DNS to be a focal point for many hackers and malevolent users these days.
Hackers now have ways of leveraging this system to direct your equipment to malicious places, putting your data and company at risk. DNS Filter replaces the old non-encrypted DNS system with fast, secure communication to DNS servers that use AI to instantly block malicious hosts within seconds of their discovery.
Explained here are some of the ways DNS is leveraged to infect computers with malware:
THE MIDDLE MAN
Since a request that your workstation makes to a DNS server across the internet is NOT encrypted, a malicious host can step in and replace the IP address in the reply with a malicious IP address. This directs you to the malicious website. This is most easily seen when you type in the address of a legitimate website, and get directed to a questionable website.
INFECTED DNS SERVER
A DNS server that isn’t properly or timely patched might get hacked, and all the requests sent to it during the time that it’s infected result in replies to malicious sites.
INFECTED WEBSITE
Thousands of legitimate websites get infected every day. During the time they are infected, they can also redirect to a malicious site, or deposit malicious payload on your machine when you go to the infected website.
THE DNS FILTER SYSTEM WORKS BY:
- Establishing a secure session between the client in the DNS servers. This guarantees that man in the middle attacks won’t occur.
- Being monitored in real time everyday all day for possible hacking attempts. This keeps the DNS server from getting infected and avoids the resulting malicious replies to clients.
- Being constantly updated about new malicious sites and their names. An advanced artificial intelligence engine monitors thousands of Bots that do nothing but crawl the internet looking for malicious websites, instantaneously reporting them back to the home office. this allows the dnsfilter system to never reply to a client with the IP address of an infected website. It also mitigates the damage that might be done by ransomware, as it blocks the ransomware agent from going out and getting an encryption key to use to encrypt your files.
Our artificial intelligence engine also updates the DNS servers much more quickly than the manual key methods used by companies like McAfee and Symantec. The DNS Filter System has been tested recently and was able to find malicious websites as much as a day before the other systems did. That makes a difference to you and me.
Our DNS Filter System has another feature that provides an additional benefit to corporate clients:
CONTENT FILTERING
Since the DNS server talks to the clients directly, clients can be blocked from websites that are not related to the company’s business practices, or waste valuable employee time. Movie sites like Netflix, social sites like Facebook, shopping sites and news sites all can be blocked, ensuring you that your employees will be working for you, not browsing the web, reading the news, or reading their friends latest posts on Facebook. By providing content filtering, the DNS Filter System service provides full circle protection.
Desktop Services Group’s DNS Filter System is inexpensive, fast, and provides a third layer of Internet protection that basically closes all the gaps. customers have the ability to log in and get reports or have reports automatically emailed to them daily, weekly or monthly.