When it comes to cyber security, DNS (the technology standard used to turn domain names into IP addresses) is often overlooked despite it providing an ‘open back door’ for cyber criminals. In response, specialist security distributor Credence Security has signed a distribution agreement with Nominet to supply African organisations and governments with Nominet’s DNS cyber security solution, NTX.
Nominet, the organisation responsible for running and protecting the UK internet, has created the NTX platform which offers full threat detection, analytics and proactive blocking of known and unknown threats. It is purpose built to analyse billions of DNS data packets in real time, pinpointing and eradicating malicious activity quickly and effortlessly. Already trusted by governments, Nominet protects the UK Public Sector DNS Service, keeping critical networks and systems at the heart of the UK safe as part of the National Cyber Security Centre’s Active Cyber Defence Programme.
Both industry research and news report that the number of cyber attacks on businesses and government institutions continues to grow. “Exploiting DNS as an attack vector is also on the rise, due to its ubiquitous nature, and cyber criminals know that companies have always done a poor job monitoring this layer of technology”, says Steve Durkin, VP Global Channel and Alliances at Nominet. “Nominet have been protecting the UK internet for over 20 years, monitoring and thwarting threats at the DNS layer. Our deep expertise in DNS has enabled us to develop a sophisticated DNS monitoring and analytics platform to identify threats in real-time and block them before they come in and spread in their network”.
Nominet NTX is built to analyse huge volumes of DNS data and the unique smart heuristics can detect single malicious packets, hidden in otherwise legitimate enterprise data. In addition, customers benefit from deep insights into their outbound network activity and enriched intelligence to current and emerging threats targeting their business. “Because we scrub traffic at DNS level, NTX prevents users from communicating with the bad guys. As a result, customers can make their existing security investment work harder for them, allowing their resources to focus on more advanced and nation state attacks,” says Steve Durkin.
Simon Campbell-Young, MD of Credence, says, “With the growth of Africa’s internet usage, Nominet’s cyber security tools will become a vital part of the security portfolio of every company on the continent as NTX allows them to see threats quickly and easily and identify ‘low-and-slow’ attacks in real-time. As companies increase their efforts to detect and respond to attacks, it provides a layer of defence that offers protection from threats that traditional security solutions would miss.”
Nominet’s NTX is also capable of uncovering malware, informing security teams of the traffic’s origin to help them scrub traffic from the network, and working with the owners of the infected machines to remove viruses. DNS traffic is often allowed to leave a company’s firewall unfiltered, making it particularly vulnerable to data exfiltration. Nominet’s platform can quickly identify the source of the traffic, enabling the organisation to shut it down and avoid data loss.
“Providing DNS monitoring, analytics, machine learning, reporting and visualisation tools, Nominet NTX collects and analyses billions of DNS queries to provide visibility and protection on threats such as malware, phishing, botnets, data exfiltration, cryptomining, and others. Not only can Nominet’s software recognise cyber threats, it can identify any misconfigurations on a network, helping to avoid latency issues and improve network performance for companies.” Campbell-Young says.
“The ease of application is also important. Nominet’s solutions are quickly and easily deployed, with no cumbersome endpoint rollout. We’re proud to be working with Nominet to implement the company’s robust approach to cyber security to Africa.”