Today we made two announcements, each very significant to all OpenDNS users. Here’s an overview to get everyone up to speed on what OpenDNS has cooked up.
The first announcement is about the comeback – and improvement – of the much-loved and anticipated Stats System. Stats are invaluable to network administrators: they give you insight into what’s happening on your network coupled with the tools to do something about it. The old system, which was overloaded and barely processing our nearly 9 billions DNS queries per day, was down for awhile as we made improvements. Sometimes you have to take a step back in order to take three steps forward. Thanks to everyone for your patience as we got it back up and running. I hope you’ll find it was worth the wait.
New functionality in the Stats System includes the comeback of the Top Domains report. This feature gives you a list of the top Web sites visited from your network and affords you unique insight into where your resources are being consumed, and which inappropriate or unsafe websites people are seeing. Top Domains now integrates directly with our Web content filtering system. This means you can look at Top Domains, see something you want blocked and block either the site or the category it fits into with a single click. (Example: Facebook.com is one of your Top Domains. Without leaving that screen you can block with Facebook.com or “Social Networks.”)
The second announcement is significant to all OpenDNS users as well as the entire Internet community. Today we’ve rolled out a way for you to see if Conficker is living on your network. The Conficker worm, also called Downadup and Kido, is massive. Some estimates of how many PCs are compromised are as high as 10 million. What’s interesting about this particular virus is that it uses the Domain Name System in a unique way: Conficker contains an algorithm that checks 250 new domains per day for instructions on what it should do. This puts us in a unique position to keep you safe since we’re in the unique position of providing insight and intelligence into your DNS service. We’ve teamed with Kaspersky Lab to identify those 250 daily domains, and stop resolving them. This means if you’re using OpenDNS, Conficker will do your network no damage. Yet another reason for your friends and colleagues to make the switch. While OpenDNS represents just a tiny drop in the sea of the Internet users today, we think this is a smart move forward.
To find out if Conficker has penetrated your network, simply log in to your account and select Stats on the left sidebar. From there choose Blocked Domains and filter “only domains blocked as malware.” This will generate a list of malware sites your network has attempted to connect with.
This is just the beginning, folks. We’ve got a year’s worth of new features we’re cranking hard on to make your network better performing and more secure. Stay tuned…
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