Dan Hubbard CTO OpenDNS

OpenDNS, a leading provider of cloud-delivered security, has announced that it has launched new capabilities to protect enterprises from targeted attacks. By serving more than 50 billion requests a day from users in over 160 different countries, OpenDNS is uniquely positioned to monitor malicious traffic during the earliest stages of emerging attacks.

With this new context, enterprises now have visibility into the targeted nature of an attack by comparing their traffic to activity on the entire OpenDNS Global Network. OpenDNS also provides predictive intelligence about the infrastructure of the attackers’ networks—before they launch a new attack. This capability enables OpenDNS customers to preemptively block bad network connections before they can do damage.

According to Gartner, Inc., “Most security teams cannot detect and react fast enough to targeted attacks with the tools they have. However, there is an emerging market of dedicated solutions that can enable security teams to more thoroughly prevent, detect and respond to sophisticated attacks.”[i]

OpenDNS Cuts Through the Noise
High-volume, single-stage attacks typically pose relatively lower risk to an organization and can distract a company from more critical issues that need immediate attention. The “noise” generated by these high-volume incidents amplifies the difficulty of detecting the most damaging attacks—those that are multi-staged and highly targeted. OpenDNS provides security teams with the context and visibility needed to detect emerging, targeted attacks, significantly reducing discovery and remediation time. Here’s how it works:

1.   OpenDNS reports on all security activity in real-time and provides the ability to view global, Internet-scale security insight on a per event basis.

2.   This reporting functionality allows organizations to easily identify threats with a large global traffic footprint as well as those that are being exposed for the first time. These serve as early indicators that a company may be the target of an emerging or ongoing attack.

3.   To simplify investigation and remediation efforts, OpenDNS pinpoints which devices, networks and users sent requests to the malicious domain in question.

4.   Finally, this global context can be used to predict and prevent future targeted threats by exposing and blocking inactive malicious infrastructure that is being prepared to launch new attacks.

“Enterprises today are challenged to keep up with the volume of attacks that are targeting their networks. Not only is the efficacy of today’s security tools declining, but when they do identify a threat they lack the context that is critical to blocking it,” said Dan Hubbard, CTO of OpenDNS. “The ability to determine the relevance and prevalence of an attack is key to prioritizing response, remediating infected hosts, and understanding the scope of the threat.”

Availability
These capabilities are available immediately as part of the OpenDNS Umbrella security service. Subscription pricing is based per user, per year.

About OpenDNS
OpenDNS is a leading provider of network security and DNS services, enabling the world to connect to the Internet with confidence on any device, anywhere, anytime. The Umbrella cloud-delivered network security service blocks advanced attacks, as well as malware, botnets and phishing threats regardless of port, protocol or application. Its predictive intelligence uses machine learning to automate protection against emergent threats before they can reach customers. OpenDNS protects all devices globally without hardware to install or software to maintain.

[i] Gartner, Inc. Market Guide for Endpoint Detection and Response Solutions, 13 May 2014 by Peter Firstbrook and Neil MacDonald