What is DNS Security? Why it's important for your business

After the year 2000, when the use and development of technology exploded, the progression of cyber risk was cumulative.

The cybersecurity industry focused during this time on new security standards and compliance, and then moved beyond compliance to examine the key business risks posed by cyber threats.

In 2022 and beyond, the industry and society have matured, and we are now focused on security suites and infrastructure unification, as well as cyber management. -risks. The opportunities and drivers of one decade do not replace those of the previous one.

Instead, they broaden the perspective and highlight well-known ideas in new ways. An example is DNS. Although its roots date back to 1966, DNS security must be part of any robust cybersecurity strategy today.

What is DNS Security?

Wondering what exactly DNS security is and why it's important to your business? Let's first look at DNS and how it all started.

Domain Name System (DNS) is an Internet protocol that provides human-readable names for a variety of web services, including email. Acting like the telephone book of the Internet, DNS converts human-readable names to IP addresses and then converts IP addresses back to names.

The project started by American Internet pioneer Bob Taylor in 1966 and known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) represents the beginning of the DNS story. Name-to-address translations were previously kept on the ARPANET in a single table contained in a file called HOSTS.TXT. This document was used to manually assign addresses.

However, manual address management had become complex and difficult. As a result, American computer scientist Paul Mockapetris proposed a new framework in 1983 that provided a dynamic, distributed system known as the Domain Name System.

With the help of Mockapetris, DNS has become able to look up IP address names rather than host names, making web access easier for regular users. In other words, without it, there would be no Internet as we know it today.

Source: Heimdal Security

In addition, Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) protect DNS from threats such as cache poisoning and ensure data security and privacy. All server responses are digitally signed by DNSSEC servers. DNSSEC resolvers check a server's signature to see if the information it received matches the information on the authoritative DNS server. The request will not be accepted if this is not the case.

So what exactly is DNS security?

DNS security refers to all the procedures created to protect the DNS infrastructure from cyber threats in order to maintain speed and reliability, and to prevent the (sometimes) disastrous effects of cyber attacks.

Why is DNS security important?

DNS has provided us with the Internet as we know it today. How far do you think it would have grown if people had to remember long strings of numbers instead of domain names?

It is obvious that the majority of Internet users use domain names to describe the websites they wish to access. However, computers use IP addresses to distinguish between different systems connected to the Internet and to route traffic over the Internet. By allowing the use of domain names, the domain name system serves as the backbone of the Internet and makes it functional.

DNS as a security hole

Although its importance is indisputable, the DNS was not necessarily designed with security in mind. Therefore, many cyberattacks can affect it - cyberattacks that can impact business money, workflow, and reputation. ...