We always want to ensure that we are providing the best security protection from malicious activity for our customers at all times. This is why, after careful discussion and research, we’ve added Mobile Threats, Drive-By Downloads/Exploits, High Risk Sites and Dynamic DNS categories to the security categories repertoire.
The Mobile Threats category is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Prevent threats that are specifically designed to infect your mobile devices, such as phones, tablets, phone tablets, camera phones, smart phones, cellular phones, rotary phones, etc. You want to protect your roaming clients. We want to help you protect your roaming clients.
The Drive-By Download/Exploits category is to prevent against a malicious download that happens without the person’s knowledge, or better yet a download that you authorize without understanding the consequences it may have on your computer or network (i.e. Surprise! That wasn’t actually a song you downloaded, it was a virus). Nobody likes malware on their computer, let alone surprise malware on their computer. We’ve created this category to keep you and everyone else, from coworkers to loved ones, safe from downloading unwanted surprises.
The High Risk Sites and Locations category is used to predictively protect against malicious domains. This is powered by our Umbrella Security Graph that processes terabytes of data daily from more than 50 billion Internet requests. Based on algorithmic calculations, we are able to evaluate whether or not a domain is potentially malicious enough to be blocked on your network.
The Dynamic DNS category won’t be used specifically for malicious DDNS domains, however will be a catch-all for any and all Dynamic DNS domains, should a user want to be overly protective of their network. Dhia Mahjoub, one of our Security Researchers, recently released a blog about DDNS domains which takes a deeper look into the behavior of DDNS domains and how they are sometimes used for large-scale “malvertising” and targeted spear-phishing. This is the only category that will not be blocked by default. We will leave this up to your discretion to switch this category on.
By adding these four new categories to Umbrella’s already-powerful security service, we’re bringing you better optimization and more customization for your networks.
But wait! There’s more: as always, we’re on the lookout for the best and brightest in security to be part of our exclusive community, where you can submit malicious content to the malware and botnet categories, as well as the new categories listed above, for review. If you’re interested, drop us a line!
