Security for DNS is a major issue every corporation across the world is facing trouble with. No matter what upgrade is being done, there is always some way to bypass and thus create security concern. However, anyone who is well conversant with network security will tell you, there is no silver bullet against all attacks. The best you can do is to ensure better security so that it is not easy to break in to the system. One of the important components of the DNS security is the DNS firewall. It is responsible for monitoring all incoming and outgoing traffic and preventing any unauthorized traffic in the system.
Why is the DNS firewall in place?
Security experts in any organization build a separate layer of security just to isolate the DNS server. With the increase in attack on the DNS servers this has become an important factor to ensure DNS server security. The current network systems no longer allow the actual IP addresses to be revealed globally. The DNS server records of IP addresses are kept local and mapped to a global IP address. This raises the question, whether or not having a DNS firewall is redundant to network security.
Even though it is true that the separate security layer with encryption and decryption process protects the DNS server to a large extent, fact remains that the DNS firewall adds to that layer of security and increases the security of the DNS server.
There are always some websites which have a reputation of carrying unwanted packets of data. The DNS firewall prevents these websites from even trying to communicate with the server. The DNS firewall is also useful when you do not wish the server to receive any request from external network. This is generally done to have a secured network where data can be accessed by internal employee or specific users who have their system granted access to the data on the server by the organization.
DDoS attack through bogus requests which keep pinging recursively cannot be prevented if there is no firewall. The requests might be generated using valid key but might be generated using another software or bot. Such a situation can potentially cripple the entire system and leads to tremendous loss. Having a DNS firewall can prevent such scenario. The major benefit of having the firewall is that the IP addresses of such bots and malware containing websites are updated in real-time with the help of data received from across the globe. With regular updates of the firewall these websites and bots can be controlled.
No security measure is completely full-proof. Thus, there is always the need to have extra protection on top of one layer of protection. This has led to the development of a new pattern of security layering, much like the onion layering. There is one level of security underneath another and thus the combined effort of all the layers help in making the network secured. DNS servers are vital for any business organization. Configuring a strong DNS firewall is never overkill.
