Cybercriminals use a variety of vectors to attack businesses, with most attacks occurring via email or the Internet. The majority of businesses have implemented a spam filter to protect against email attacks, but protection against web-based attacks is often lacking. Internal resources are protected by a firewall, but the actions of employees can easily allow threat actors to bypass those protections, unless additional controls are implemented such as DNS filtering.
What is DNS Filtering?
DNS filtering is a process for controlling access to web content, akin to a parental control filter used to prevent children from accessing age-inappropriate content over the Internet. Many businesses use DNS filtering for that very purpose – to prevent employees from accessing Internet content that violates their acceptable Internet usage policies. This is important for brand protection, to prevent the development of a hostile work environment, and to improve employee productivity by curbing cyberslacking. While content control is important for these reasons, the main reason businesses use DNS filtering is for security. Access to web pages considered a threat will be blocked.
Did You Know?
99.99%
SpamTitan’s spam catch rate
11 Seconds
a ransomware attack occurs
$285
the average cost to manage spam per person without an email filter
56.50%
of all email is spam
How Does DNS Filtering Work?
The DNS – or Domain Name System – is used by every Internet application for communication and is a critical part of the Internet. When a domain is purchased from a domain registrar and is hosted, it is assigned a unique IP address that allows the domain to be located. When a user attempts to visit a web page, a DNS lookup must be performed to find the IP address to allow the web content to be located.
With DNS filtering, instead of the DNS server returning the IP address of the web page, the request is subject to certain controls. If those checks of the content fail, the content will not be loaded and the user will be told, via a locally hosted block page, why the web page cannot be loaded. By applying web filtering at the DNS layer, there is no impact on page load times or Internet speed.
DNS filters constantly crawl the Internet and assess and categorize web content to allow category-based filtering controls to be applied. If a web page has not previously been encountered, it is assessed and categorized in real-time. Every web request must pass through the DNS filter, so users are unable to access unfiltered web content. Businesses can automatically block access to known malicious websites and web pages and illegal content through constantly updated blocklists, and DNS filters can be configured to block downloads of certain files from the Internet, such as executable files which are used to install malware.
Best DNS Security Solution for Blocking Online Threats
A DNS Filter is the best DNS security solution for blocking online threats, including malware downloads from the Internet and the web-based element of phishing attacks. DNS filters have almost zero latency and users are prevented from accessing dangerous content.
It is important to choose the best DNS security solution for your business and there are several factors that you should consider before choosing a DNS filtering solution. It is worth noting that there are free DNS filters available, but these are usually designed for consumer use and lack the features needed by businesses. If you want the best DNS security and protection for your business, it is necessary to pay for a DNS filter.
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Features of the Best DNS Security Solutions
- Easy setup, easy to use interface, and low maintenance
- Comprehensive coverage of the Internet
- Multi-language filtering
- Highly granular controls to prevent over- and under-blocking of web content
- Fast filtering
- Active Directory integration to easily set user and group policies
- Blacklisting and whitelisting
- Real-time reporting
- API-driven for integration into existing systems
- IPv6 coverage
- Roaming agents to protect remote workers
- Bypass keys for when standard filtering controls need to be temporarily bypassed
WebTitan Cloud: The Best DNS Security Solution for SMBs and MSPs
TitanHQ offers the best DNS security solution for small- and medium-sized businesses and managed service providers for controlling access to web content and blocking the full range of online threats. WebTitan is a cloud-delivered DNS filter with market-leading accuracy, coverage, and malicious website detection, which covers more than 99.9% of the active web in 200 languages.
The solution is fed threat intelligence from 650 million end users and 5 trillion web queries a month and has 100% coverage of the Alexa Top 1 million most visited websites. WebTitan Cloud blocks more than 3 million malicious URLs and phishing sites at any one time, crawls 700 million URLs daily, and performs around 300,000 revisits each day.
WebTitan is fast. DNS lookups take just 5 milliseconds so there is zero latency and set up is quick and easy – you just point your DNS to WebTitan Cloud, access your intuitive web-based portal, and set your content controls. This can be done by clicking any of the 53 categories of content you wish to block (with 10 customizable categories), and you can also block content based on the presence of keywords.
WebTitan has an extensive reporting suite, which you can configure to generate and send reports automatically. You also get a real-time view of Internet activity and can drill down to see individual users.
We believe WebTitan Cloud is the best DNS security solution for SMBs because it is so easy to set up and use, it provides industry-leading protection against threats, and all customers benefit from world-class customer support. Check out the ratings from users of WebTitan Cloud on G2 Crowd and you will discover our customers believe this is the best DNS security solution.
It is the best choice for MSPs due to the ease at which the solution can be integrated into MSP systems and added to current service stacks. WebTitan is a multi-tenant and highly scalable solution and is provided with multiple hosting options and in white-label form if desired. Another major benefit is highly competitive pricing, with flexible payment options including monthly billing.
Don’t just take our word for it though – Take advantage of our free trial to see for yourself how easy the solution is to use and the benefits it brings.