Table of Contents
- Summary
- Market Categories and Deployment Types
- Key Criteria Comparison
- GigaOm Radar
- Vendor Insights
- Analyst’s Take
- Methodology
- About Paul Stringfellow
- About GigaOm
- Copyright
1. Summary
The domain name system (DNS) is fundamental to every modern organization. Without it, networks, including the internet, cannot function. You’d imagine such an essential technology was designed to be ultra-secure and resilient, but unless you’ve invested in DNS-layer security, it’s likely your security stack is not offering effective protection, leaving the DNS vulnerable to being tampered with by cybercriminals. Vulnerable DNS can leave your organization open to a massive range of threats including:
- Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks
- DNS hijacking
- Cache poisoning
- DNS spoofing
- DNS typosquatting
- Man-in-the-middle attacks
All of these threats take advantage of vulnerabilities to exploit and breach your network defenses. Malicious attackers can create false DNS records to fool legitimate users into visiting fake websites, use DNS traffic to tunnel in malicious code such as ransomware, or move data out and past network defenses.
It’s therefore essential that DNS vulnerabilities are fixed. Additionally, because of where DNS compromise happens in the attack chain, securing the DNS can help reduce risks and stop threats much earlier than other security methods. This allows organizations to be more proactive in their security response and quicker in their mitigation actions.
Organizations can deploy DNS security via specific DNS-focused solutions or as part of a broader security suite of tools; solutions can be deployed as physical devices or as services. Integration is often a simple matter of redirecting DNS requests to a security service. DNS security providers offer solutions that are capable of meeting the DNS security needs of organizations with a disparate infrastructure and a distributed workforce.
This GigaOm Radar report highlights key DNS security vendors and equips IT decision-makers with the information needed to select the best fit for their business and use case requirements. In the corresponding GigaOm report “Key Criteria for Evaluating DNS Security Solutions,” we describe in more detail the key features and metrics that are used to evaluate vendors in this market.
How to Read this Report
This GigaOm report is one of a series of documents that helps IT organizations assess competing solutions in the context of well-defined features and criteria. For a fuller understanding, consider reviewing the following reports:
Key Criteria report: A detailed market sector analysis that assesses the impact that key product features and criteria have on top-line solution characteristics—such as scalability, performance, and TCO—that drive purchase decisions.
GigaOm Radar report: A forward-looking analysis that plots the relative value and progression of vendor solutions along multiple axes based on strategy and execution. The Radar report includes a breakdown of each vendor’s offering in the sector.
Solution Profile: An in-depth vendor analysis that builds on the framework developed in the Key Criteria and Radar reports to assess a company’s engagement within a technology sector. This analysis includes forward-looking guidance around both strategy and product.