SBN

Smart DNS Resolution for a Better Safer Internet

By Arlen Frew 

Top-level Domain (TLD) operators are focused on making the Internet a better and safer place, enabling name registrations, and maintaining the DNS namespace in support of their stakeholders.  The entire Internet ecosystem, including TLDs, is always looking for ways to improve security. This is especially important as everyone and everything gets connected and awareness of the adverse impact of malicious online activity increases.  Some TLD operators are also looking for ways to supplement their revenue streams to better serve the breadth of economic, cultural, and linguistic needs of their constituents, and to meet policy requirements unique to their region or vertical emphasis.

The Canadian Internet Registry Authority (CIRA), operator of the .CA domain on behalf of Canada, works to deliver an enhanced DNS resolution service across their region.  Their objective is to provide a foundational layer of security to a wide range of organizations that might otherwise be underserved because they cannot afford security protections, and/or lack the technical resources to take advantage of them.  The solution uses smart resolvers deployed across Canada that evaluate customer DNS queries to determine whether they’re malicious. Threat coverage is continuously and automatically updated through a cloud service in order to deter highly dynamic exploits.  

With this approach CIRA can provide their customers maintenance-free protections to cover every device on their networks, including laptops, smartphones, tablets, DVRs, game consoles, TVs and other Internet of Things (IoT) devices.  Since the protections are network based, there’s no need to install software or provide updates like traditional client-based security products require. There’s also no need for any customer technical expertise on-premise. The service is essentially a turnkey effort, enabled by pointing customer DNS resolvers at the CIRA cloud.

Additional capabilities allow families and small businesses to express their preferences for the content they want to be available in their homes and workplaces.  Content filters can be personalized to reflect the diverse tastes and needs of users anywhere in the world. A highly visual graphical portal, designed for non-experts, displays what’s happening on each home and business network.  

Akamai offers a range of smart DNS resolvers that can be deployed in customer networks, as a cloud based offering, or as a fully managed service.  Smart services are deployed with one of the world’s most accurate and extensive domain and URL databases for filtering, with millions of validated and categorized URLs, maintained by Data Science experts.  Pre-populated categories are continually updated to ensure new exploits or unwanted content are appropriately classified and automatically filtered. 


About CIRA

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) manages the .CA top-level domain on behalf of all Canadians. CIRA also develops technologies and services that help support its goal of building a better online Canada. CIRA’s D-Zone Anycast DNS provides is the most comprehensive Canadian DNS solution available on the market, helping to improve security and performance for Canadian organizations. The CIRA team operates one of the fastest growing ccTLDs, a high-performance global DNS network, and one of the world’s most advanced back-end registry solutions. CIRA helps to support the Canadian Internet community through investments in Internet Exchange Points, the Canada Internet Forum, and the CIRA Community Investment Program.

 

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from The Akamai Blog authored by Akamai. Read the original post at: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheAkamaiBlog/~3/S4mxT8V4P3Q/smart-dns-resolution-for-a-better-safer-internet.html