Is your business adequately protected against domain name server (DNS) attacks?
Chances are, you’re overlooking your defenses and have a glaring vulnerability. This is a scary thought because DNS attacks will expose your network, which can make you unable to do anything.
Making matters worse, there are different types of DNS attacks. This includes volumetric denial of service, slow drip denial of service, exploits, and protocol abuse.
Each attack style impacts the DNS a little differently, but the common outcomes are an inability to use your website or service and maliciously changing the results of DNS queries.
As you may expect, DNS attacks are a hassle to deal with because they disrupt your operations. To properly deal with them, you need to beef up your DNS protection.
We’ll explain four useful tips for preventing DNS attacks below.
Identify Failure Points
One significant objective is to identify your failure points.
Unfortunately, your DNS is likely to have several failure points due to how open it naturally is. This is a necessity for your customers to interact with your website.
Because of this connection, there is a link between you and the outside world that can be exploited. With this in mind, you should be identifying every point in your DNS that can potentially fail.
A few of the most common include your DNS protocol, your DNS server configuration, and infrastructure capacity.
Once you know where your failure points are, you’ll understand what you need to add protection to. Attackers are unlikely to try to exploit strong points in your DNS, so this gives you the right area to focus on.
Limit Attack Surface
You’ll also want to limit the attack surface of your DNS.
In other words, you want to minimize the risk and impact of a potential attack.
Focusing on the risk aspect, part of reducing this entails identifying your weaknesses. You’ll also need to take measures to shore them up and actively defend against attacks.
The impact part of this is also relevant because you don’t want one penetration to grant access to the entire DNS. With this in mind, you should segment your DNS as much as possible.
With a decentralized DNS, an exploitation in one sector will prevent access to other areas. This means that an attacker would have to continuously penetrate multiple sectors to gain full access to your DNS.
By the time this happens, you would likely have detected them and begun to address the attack.
To do this, you should ensure that each portion of your DNS only has essential information in it. Restrict all processes to mandatory objectives to further reduce potential attack points.
If you choose to limit your attack surface, then you can sustain a single attack without collapsing. This makes you far more resilient and capable of managing DNS attacks in the future.
Monitor Network Traffic
Another useful tactic is to monitor network traffic.
When your DNS is under attack, it’s typically fairly straightforward to notice. However, if you aren’t looking then you won’t be able to prevent an attack in progress.
To solve this, you should be constantly monitoring network traffic. As you do this, you should ensure that no rogue services are running and that all communications are authorized.
Through viewing network traffic, you can see where queries are coming and going from. Follow them to ensure that communication is only flowing through the proper channels.
Should a query go elsewhere, then this may indicate that a DNS attack is happening. Identifying this will allow you to deny the request and stop the attack from affecting the DNS.
Picture network traffic monitoring like having a security guard. You need something watching over your DNS to ensure that nothing shady is happening.
Use Network Encryption
Lastly, consider using network encryption.
The issue with the DNS is that it is connected to your network. This creates another vulnerability that can be exploited.
The solution to this is simple and that’s to use network encryption. If an attacker cannot access your network, then entry into the DNS will do them little good.
If an attacker does successfully penetrate your DNS, then you want to give them one last hurdle that keeps you protected. An attacker can’t use the DNS if they only see encrypted data. As a result, they won’t be able to reroute DNS queries.
Encryption is a highly useful tool that prevents unauthorized entry and it’s a smart way to protect your network. The added benefit is that your DNS will also have an added layer of defense against attackers.
Closing Thoughts
Domain name server (DNS) attacks can be devastating and debilitating. They can happen in multiple different ways but usually result in reduced or halted service and rerouted DNS queries.
DNS attacks sabotage your productivity and give an unauthorized party access to some of your network’s most sensitive information. Because of this, you need to prioritize DNS protection to minimize the effectiveness of an attack.
A few great tactics for this include identifying failure points, limiting your attack surface, monitoring network traffic, and using network encryption.
If you don’t have strong DNS protection in place, then now is the time to fix that before an attack happens! Do your business and network a huge favor by preventing irritating DNS attacks.