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OpenDNS

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

In an audit of my employer's cybersecurity stance, I found things to be generally quite good. But I didn't like the lack of web filtering for malware, botnets, etc. This applied both at the office and for our home users. I surveyed the field of solutions and one provider, OpenDNS, stood out.

Because the bad actors rely on DNS to stay ahead of ISP's and LEO's shutting down services running out of particular IP addresses, OpenDNS is effective in cutting off such things as calls to bad websites embedded in spearphishing emails, self-installing malware, etc. It looks very solid, all the more so for being reasonably priced for corporate clients and free for home use.

What I particularly like is the simplicity of using the network effect – where the utility of a service increases in a more than linear fashion with the increase in the number of people on the service. In this case, OpenDNS gathers information on their customer's experience with bad actors on the Internet and provides throttling on to prevent further client interaction with the identified bad actors. I reckon we should all go on this service to amplify that network effect.