Ask The Experts: DNS Management
The ever present and increasing threat to businesses of all sizes from criminal cyber activity needs to be countered with the secure safeguarding of domain names and their associated DNS hosting service. Gareth Jehu, Global Operations Director at Com Laude, explains the importance of utilising an enterprise-grade, secure, and highly available and responsive DNS service.
What are the biggest trends and challenges at present?
Ten years ago, the threat of a DNS compromise wasn’t so high on the radar for many businesses. The move to digital has accelerated exponentially over this period and the advent of the Internet of Things, with its ubiquitous penetration into business and personal life, has sadly been matched by a reciprocal increase in the scale and frequency of cybercrime. Often, this results in information security breaches, which are costly to businesses in terms of regulatory fines and increased operating compliance costs, as well as brand reputation damage.
The size of the threat has now grown to the extent that businesses are naturally becoming more security conscious, either through self-choice or regulation, and this is reflected in the value and worth of the global cybersecurity market, which according to Cybersecurity Ventures[1] has grown from a mere US$3.5 billion in 2004 to a predicted US$170.4 billion in 2022. How businesses host, manage, and protect their DNS is now an integral part of improving their overall digital security posture.
Many domain names are still hosted on the more basic Unicast DNS, which can still be appropriate for defensive, non-operational domains. However, anything that services critical business functions such as email, websites or key operational or transactional processes needs to be protected by an enterprise-grade solution, in order to ensure high availability and responsiveness, and to safeguard them from attack vectors that include, volumetric Denial of Service attacks, DNS hijacking and DNS cache poisoning.
For most companies, the cost of losing key digital services for a day, a few hours or even minutes, is considerable, affecting brand reputation, increasing cost and resulting in loss of revenue, so protection of these services is critical.
What can you do about it?
If you are to ensure uninterrupted DNS resolution of your domain names and associated digital services, and protect them from attack, the first step is to move them to an enterprise-grade DNS platform.
Com Laude’s Managed DNS service guarantees the availability of your domain name’s DNS via a global, over-built, DDoS resilient Anycast network, with a reliability history backed by 100% uptime SLA. This means that even when under high volumetric DDoS attack, we keep your DNS and dependent services running smoothly and efficiently.
Combining DNS and domain name management
DNS and domain name management are very complementary and at Com Laude, we offer the convenience and value of combining management of both through a single, secure user interface (UI) and API.
Centralising the management of domain name assets and DNS in this way contributes to overall improvement in digital security, and also provides the opportunity to rightsize portfolios, ensuring good alignment between business need and portfolio size and coverage.
The question of who purchases domains, who manages them and even what registrations the domain name portfolio contains can be more easily managed through centralisation, and also provides the opportunity to identify the “crown jewel” registrations that need additional security measures, such as, SSL protection, registry locks and online brand protection.
How difficult is it to switch DNS?
The process of moving to a Managed DNS service is quick and safe, assuming you have the support of an established and experienced provider. At Com Laude, we have that experience and manage large-scale portfolio DNS migrations on a regular basis. Our Domain name and DNS experts will work closely with you to agree a transition plan and follow tried and tested ISO9001 procedures to ensure consistency, transparency, quality, and accuracy throughout the migration process.
To find out more about Com Laude’s Domain Name Security Services, please contact us.
[1]https://cybersecurityventures.com/cybersecurity-market-report/