When it comes to cybersecurity, organizations often focus on the big picture. But security threats can also be found on more granular levels of a company’s infrastructure, such as its DNS servers. Any organization that relies on the internet to do business needs to have DNS security in place. One way to address DNS security issues is to educate your staff about best practices for keeping their DNS information safe.
The DNS, or domain name system, is a key part of the internet infrastructure, and DNS servers are often the target of attacks. A DNS security strategy helps to protect DNS servers from attack and to ensure that they are able to continue to function even if an attack is successful. There are a number of different DNS security strategies that organizations can use, and the best strategy for any given organization will depend on a number of factors. However, all DNS security strategies should include some basic elements, such as DNS server hardening, DNS authentication, and DNS filtering.
In this post, I’ll walk through the top steps you can take to identify and mitigate risks related to your organization’s DNS environment.
Step 1: Start by looking at your DNS traffic
The first step to understanding your DNS traffic is to know what it is. DNS (Domain Name System) traffic is the communication between your device and the internet, beginning with a request for a website and ending with an answer about where on the internet that site can be found. This process involves looking up a domain name, sending that request through your network infrastructure, receiving an answer from the DNS server responsible for resolving requests for that domain name, and finally sending data to whatever destination service is needed.
Step 2: Next, verify the DNS servers that are being used for lookups
The next step is to verify the DNS servers that are being used for lookups. You should do this to ensure that they’re secure and not being used for malicious purposes. It’s also a good idea to check whether or not they’re being misused by sending spam, malware, and other malicious content. If a hacker has control over one of your organization’s primary DNS servers, then all devices in your organization will get infected by any unsecured content on these servers.
Step 3: Look for anomalous behavior
Now that you’ve identified whether there are security issues with your DNS infrastructure, it’s time to find out if there are any anomalies within that infrastructure.
There are several ways to do this:
- Look for unexpected DNS traffic. You can use tools like Topology from Sysdig to get a visual representation of your network and identify anomalous behavior. For example, if a user is running an unusual amount of DNS queries from their device, this could be an indication of malicious activity.
- Look for traffic that doesn’t match the normal pattern or user profile (for example, if there is high latency or lots of packet loss). This can help identify malware on user devices and other suspicious activity as well as nonstandard usage patterns due to internal attacks against servers in your organization’s network perimeter defenses (NDPs).
Step 4: Monitor your network and keep iterating
As a final step, you need to monitor your network to keep it secure. Monitoring is important because it allows you to identify and prevent problems with your DNS, as well as quickly identify and mitigate threats. If you proactively monitor your DNS security, it can help ensure that the data in your organization remains safe at all times.
People often think of monitoring as something they do once or twice per year when they perform routine audits on their network—but this isn’t sufficient for keeping things secure over time. In fact, monitoring should be ongoing so that IT professionals can stay up-to-date with real-time information about changes that occur within their networks and systems. An effective monitoring strategy will also allow them to keep an eye out for anything unusual that may occur in order to take action before any damage occurs (or even better: prevent those events from happening).
Final Thoughts
In the end, it’s important to remember that your organization is only as secure as its weakest link. So, if you want to ensure that your network is safe from DNS attacks and other threats, it’s crucial to take a closer look at the system itself. You should start by looking at how much traffic goes through it each day and what kind of activity you see on those networks. Then look for anything anomalous or out-of-the-ordinary—those are signs that something fishy might be going on! Lastly, don’t forget about monitoring systems; ensure they’re set up correctly so they can catch intruders before getting into trouble!
