DNSFilter Malicious Domain Protection identifies risky domains

DNSFilter announced the addition of a new Malicious Domain Protection feature to its protective DNS software, building on its machine learning capabilities.

This feature bolsters DNSFilter’s defenses providing better visibility and protection against Domain Generation Algorithms used in malware, botnet and other malicious domains, in addition to other threat vectors. This expands the company’s threat detection capabilities and its ability to block large lists of undesirable domains and the security threats they pose.

Enterprise security teams that manage and secure both modern and legacy infrastructure struggle to protect end users from all categories of web-based threats. DNSFilter scans every domain its customers access to identify zero-day threats and prevent access before they infiltrate the network.

Malicious Domain Protection leverages new ML capabilities to assist in the identification of risky domain strings, which includes domain generation algorithms (DGA) and other threat vectors. DGAs are used in malware to generate up to 250,000 domain names each day for use as rendezvous points with their C&C servers.

Malicious Domain Protection can identify more threats, including phishing, cryptojacking, botnet, ransomware and other spam domains, and catch them sooner. In the testing phase, Malicious Domain Protection identified more than 7,000 risky domains not yet identified by any other feeds. Threats were identified up to 10 days ahead of other third-party feeds with one domain being caught 59 days ahead.

“We are constantly working to offer better awareness and remediation of threat vectors. DNSFilter has a powerful data collection engine, supplemented by third-party feeds and we are always innovating new ways to use this data to protect our customers. We intend to take full advantage of all this data to protect our customers. With this new addition, our customers have even more safeguards,” said David Elkind, chief data scientist, DNSFilter