With the latest events in the international arena unfolding faster each day and new unheard-of threats hacking huge companies that seemed untouchable, it is becoming impossible for businesses to ignore the need for additional layers of security.
Ransomware, phishing websites, botnets, malware, viruses (the list goes on) – all of this is waiting for you or your employees to enter a dangerous resource, even if just by an honest mistake.
If you are still unsure about the need for a serious approach to cybersecurity in your company, listen to US President Joe Biden officially warning the private sector to strengthen IT security.
How Does It Help Businesses?
First, let’s start with ABC – how does DNS filtering work? In short, it blocks malicious sites and filters out dangerous content. DNS connects the domain name with an IP address and simplifies the communication between the device and the server. During these processes, it checks if the resource you are trying to reach is safe and accessible.
For businesses, it means controlling what your employees have access to and protecting them from websites that potentially can harm their computers and the whole corporate network. Beyond that, it saves the company’s money: imagine how much they spend on cyber-attack recovery and backup and add new layers of protection to prevent the same madness from occuring. The aftermath of cybercrime makes the eye twitch – research shows that a data breach costs more than $4m per incident.
Additionally, web filtering helps maintain your employees’ productivity: according to studies, more than half of staff spend more than four hours a week on websites related to anything but work. About 26% are even less responsible – they spend over seven hours per week surfing the web for nothing. This means 26 days of the year go to waste. Try using the average salary in your organization to convert days to money and see for yourself.
Beware: Ransomware
The biggest threat for businesses is ransomware – easy to catch, hard to eliminate. Some experts claim there is no way to protect yourself from ransomware fully, so building up more defenses makes more sense.
DNS filtering saves your corporate network from other threats, as well. Those could be phishing attacks (malicious emails or websites that disguise as a trustworthy source), viruses (harmful software), botnets (networks running bots), malware (a more significant category that includes ransomware, trojans, viruses, adware, spyware, etc.), DoS and DDoS (denial of service and distributed denial of service that can come in forms of click scams) and more.
Why Now?
If the US President’s official warning does not make you add multiple layers of security to your corporate network, nothing will. As President Joe Biden predicts, there will be new waves of cyber-attacks on businesses, data breaches, stolen money, etc. Events in the international arena can be unpredictable, but risks are always the same: you will get hacked without adequate security.
Another reason to get DNS filtering now is the possibility of protecting your remote workers. Usually, this feature is realized via a roaming client that works in an employee’s network, wherever they are. Unfortunately, not every web filtering vendor offers this, so watch out.
Checklist for Choosing a DNS Web Filtering Provider
Before landing on one or another DNS web filtering provider for your business, make sure you go through the main points they are bound to offer.
- Easy deployment, so you don’t have to suffer through implementation
- Roaming client availability so you can protect your remote workers
- Filtering based on categories, so it’s easy to block both dangerous, and inappropropriate and unrelated to work content
- Awards by test labs are usually won by vendors you can trust
- Latency should not be higher than 40 msec
- Endpoint protection, including device management, encryption and more
- Machine learning and big data should be used to provide web filtering
- Compliance with regulations like CIPA, IWF, BPJM or others, depending on your location
- Last but not least – make sure they provide both content filtering and malware protection to have it both ways, but pay for one
