4 Reasons to Use a DNS Filtering Service for Online Protection

There are several threats to any office network and most of them come from the other side of the internet. Two examples include malicious websites that download malware as soon as you load the page and popup ads that jump up just as you’re clicking on something else and cause a ransomware or adware infection.

Phishing emails, which are the main delivery method for malware and top cause of data breaches, now favor URLs over file attachments. Emails using malicious website links make up 88% of all messages containing malware.

The reason behind file attachments becoming less popular for malware delivery is that email phishing and antivirus programs often can stop them. But, if an organization doesn’t have a DNS filtering service, then dangerous URLs can often get past other security measures.

This makes web protection an important part of any cybersecurity plan. In addition to measures like UTM firewalls, and managed antivirus, DNS filtering helps protect your network and reduces your risk of a data breach.

What is DNS Filtering?

DNS is an acronym for Domain Name System and it’s the system that translates an IP address for a website to the domain name that you type in (i.e. the www.name.com) and sends you to the correct site based upon the domain you entered.

A DNS filtering service (also referred to as web protection) acts as a barrier between your office network and the internet at large. It redirects your organization’s IP address assigned by your router to a server owned by the service provider.

This allows the DNS filtering service to act as a protective portal deploying security protocols, blocking blacklisted sites, and quarantining any threats before they can impact your users and their devices.

For example, if an employee accidentally clicks a link in a phishing email believing it to be a legitimate link to shipment tracking, even though they don’t notice it, they’ll be connecting through the DNS filter to get to the website URL they just clicked.

As soon as they get to the malicious site and it attempts to download malware onto their device, the DNS filter will immediately recognize the threat and contain it instead of allowing it to download.

That’s just one important feature of a DNS filtering service.

Benefits of Using a DNS Filtering Service

Having a protective barrier between your office devices and network and the internet offers several helpful features.

Protects Users from Malicious Websites

The number one reason that most businesses use DNS filtering is to protect them from malware and viruses that can result from an employee accidentally loading a malicious site into their web browser.

Phishing attacks increased by 40.9% in 2018. It’s an ever-growing threat that becomes more sophisticated all the time. For example, 98% of phishing emails that reach users don’t contain or link to malware, often hackers will use free services like OneDrive or Dropbox, and link to a legitimate-looking file that when loaded redirects a user to a website that contains malware. In this case the protective measure you need is DNS filtering.

Allows You to Block Non-Productive Websites

A helpful feature of using DNS filtering is that you can block access from your network to unproductive sites or those that aren’t work appropriate. For example, explicit sites, social media sites, video streaming sites, or sites containing propaganda.

Provides Mobile Security

When users on mobile devices are connected to public Wi-Fi, those connections are generally unsecure and if an employee logs into a business app or their work email while on a free wireless connection their password could be stolen.

DNS filtering services can be used with mobile devices as well as desktop computers and give your users a secure portal to use to connect to your business applications even when using an unsecure hotspot.

Potential to Improve Connection Speed

No matter what service you’re using to connect through, your internet service provider or a DNS filtering service, that match of IP address to domain name has to be performed to get you to the right web page. Some services perform that match faster than others.

Secure DNS filtering services may offer you a faster experience because they do the DNS lookup faster in order to ensure their services improve and don’t degrade performance.

Even just a few seconds faster when it comes to loading a website can add up quickly and improve office productivity overall when you multiple it times the number of web pages visited daily by your staff.

Is Your Office Properly Protected from Malicious Websites?

DNS filtering has become an important part of any business cybersecurity strategy. C Solutions can do a free assessment of your current IT security and ensure you’ve got the web protection you need.

Schedule a free cybersecurity assessment today!  Call 407-536-8381 or reach us online.