Enhanced DNS Infrastructure Security

DNS servers deliver critical services to your company, such as internet accessibility for your customers, partners and employees as well as access to network applications and other indispensable services such as email, CRM, VoIP, services in the Cloud…

As a consequence of their fundamental role in the Information Technology infrastructure, DNS servers are visible and vulnerable to everyone. They are playing a dual role in the “kill-chain”, as a threat vector and as a favorite target.

DNS attacks are more and more sophisticated, combining multiple attack vectors at the same time and the DNS landscape security is continuously moving. There are different types of DNS attacks:

• Volumetric attacks, typically DDoS, Amplification and Reflection attacks.
• Insidious or slow attacks, such as «water torture», Phantom and Sloth Domain
  attacks .
• Attacks using bugs and/or flaws in DNS services or on operating system running
  DNS services.

An IDC DNS Security survey conducted in June 2014 shows that 72 % of respondents said they had been targeted by a DNS attack in the last 12 months. As a result, their businesses reflected the following: 45% were impacted by downtime, 36% reported loss of business, and 40% had intellectual property stolen.

IDC concluded that “very little is being done about DNS security and companies feel that the basic protection offered by a firewall is enough. This is a real case of the wrong answer to a real problem. Firewalls are not the right technology to fight zero day vulnerabilities on DNS servers or when they are under DNS DDoS attack, as they will have no effect”.