Umbrella Security Labs broke the news yesterday that Syria’s Internet had gone offline, after seeing a DNS queries to and from Syria drop to near zero.

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Shortly after our team broke the story, ZDnet, Huffington Post, The Washington Post, and The Next Web shared additional updates.

You can follow @thinkumbrella on Twitter for future updates on the story.  Our research team is currently examining data to for additional insight into the blackout.

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We’ll also take a closer look at how schools are securing every device that connects to their networks, including the iPads and Laptops used in 1:1 programs. Plus, we’ll share stories from organizations like NetworkMaine, which runs all the Internet infrastructure for K-12 schools and libraries in the state of Maine, and recently turned to a cloud-delivery platform after years of struggling with hardware.

I hope you’ll join me. You can find all the registration details here.

The post Join the webcast: Cloud-delivered Web filtering for K-12 networks and 1:1 programs appeared first on OpenDNS Blog.

In the past year alone, the OpenDNS managed service provider team has tripled in size, and now includes four dedicated engineers and a product manager that work alongside your salespeople, Jericka, Andrew and Chris. The expanded team is working hard on releasing new features and capabilities that will make it even easier for MSPs to leverage our cloud-delivered Web security service Umbrella. Umbrella for MSPs enables technology and IT service providers to protect their customers against malware and botnet infections, reducing the time they spend cleaning up devices.

Excited to see how it all works? Stop by our booth at Kaseya Connect, or visit www.umbrella.com/msp.

See you in Las Vegas!

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The way it works is simple: drop one of our lightweight virtual appliances into your network, direct your DNS traffic through it, and start mapping your network based on specific internal IP addresses and/or subnets. You can apply policy immediately, or evaluate how those resources are using the network through our reporting functionality and then choose to apply policies that best suit them.

One of the great things about how the Umbrella cloud-delivered Web security solution works is that you can layer on policies from the outside-in, which ensures a standard policy is applied but exceptions can be made. For example, a customer could create a general, restrictive policy for all distributed offices, based only on redirecting their DNS traffic to the Umbrella service. Next, for that customer’s larger sites, they might drop a Virtual Appliance in and define specific policies for those sites. Then, that customer could create some policies for internal resources within those sites, like  guest wireless or testing labs. Finally, the customer could integrate with Active Directory to provide user-specific policies.

The best part is that all of this is managed centrally through a single Web-based console and policy builder that’s easy to use for administrators of all skill levels. The net result is that you can define and manage your distributed network in the way that works best for you. Just another improvement to the Umbrella service to help provide you with the visibility and control you need to keep your users safe and productive!

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Our newer sites are strategic locations in key buildings hosting Internet exchanges, which allows us to peer directly with networks that use OpenDNS. Peering is a big factor when we’re deciding where to open a datacenter, as it gives us the ability to connect directly to other organizations. Network latency is very important for our service and this helps brings our service as close to the user as we can get without installing equipment on their network.

The new datacenters bring OpenDNS’s services closer to millions of European users, many have already reported increases in speed and performance. Like all of our datacenters, these six new locations in Europe will leverage Anycast technology. Our line of Umbrella security services is seeing massive global adoption, and Anycast technology is a huge part of what makes the service so reliable and fast for customers around the world.

A quick refresher on how Anycast works: OpenDNS automatically routes your requests to the the datacenter that’s geographically closest to you. So, say for example you’re traveling in Hong Kong but your corporate headquarters is in New York. Instead of routing your request back to HQ, OpenDNS will route it to our Hong Kong datacenter, giving you a dramatically improved Internet experience.

OpenDNS, which still reports zero downtime since our launch in 2006, and transparently shares network performance details on our website, now resolves a whopping 50 billion DNS queries daily. We’re planning on continuing our global expansion strategy throughout 2013.

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The company, which places heightened focus and importance on its security strategy, had built an extremely fortified network architecture that included unified threat management (UTM) devices, dedicated firewalls and desktop antivirus. However, FLEXcon still had no way of completely preventing malware before it penetrated its network. As a result, the team was still seeing an average of three malware infections each week. While that number may seem trivial, the average end-user downtime per infection was approximately eight hours, and PC techs were continually dragged away from proactive IT projects.

That’s when Chris Marinin, IT Security Analyst at FLEXcon, reached out to other IT professionals he trusted. He received several recommendations that he try out Umbrella, OpenDNS’s line of Internet security services for businesses. Chris told us, “Our layered network security environment is set up so the day-to-day overhead is minimal. We needed to find a way to seal our network with a very low-maintenance solution. Everyone I talked to told me Umbrella by OpenDNS would make the perfect addition to the layered security architecture I was building.”

FLEXcon chose to deploy Umbrella Enterprise because the solution proactively prevents malware before it can enter the network environment. Umbrella blocks malware in two ways: users are prevented from clicking on known malicious links so they can’t download malware, and infected devices are prevented from phoning home to botnet command and control, so botnets are unable to launch malicious tasks. Unlike many Secure Web Gateway appliances that only provide security for HTTP/S traffic, Umbrella uniquely blocks malicious traffic that travels over any port, protocol or application. On average, OpenDNS is now blocking 80,000,000 malware, botnet and phishing-related requests each day.

Chris told us, “We looked at alternative UTM devices, but we really needed something that could stop the threat before it had a chance to enter our network. Umbrella Enterprise has a reputation in the IT community for doing exactly that.” Chris and the FLEXcon team got started on Umbrella through a frictionless free trial, and as Chris explains, “It was crystal clear during our free trial that Umbrella Enterprise works as promised.”

If you’d like to take Umbrella for a spin and see firsthand how the service prevented 6,000 requests for malicious domains, 300 requests for botnet communications and 1,000 requests for proxy/anonymizer sites for FLEXcon in the first month alone, let us know by signing up for a free trial today.

The post Field Reports: How FLEXcon reduced malware by 98% with Umbrella by OpenDNS appeared first on OpenDNS Blog.

In a world where security needs to be delivered 24×7, the approach we take to preserving privacy and providing transparency is of paramount importance.

The reason delivering security as a service is so transformative is that it’s the only way to adequately protect people when they are outside the office. The appliance model doesn’t work in a world where people take their laptops home, get infected, and bring the infection back to the office. And it’s useless when we’re talking about mobile devices accessing cloud applications, neither of which ever touch the corporate network. To be effective, security needs to be enabled anytime you do anything on the Internet, not just when you’re in the office.

But a world of 24×7 security has our customers and us asking a lot of important questions. In order for IT to effectively deliver the message that security has to happen whenever and wherever users work in order to be secure, they also need to be empowered to have discussions around transparency and privacy. Employees also want to know how they are being monitored, especially outside the office and on their own devices. And frankly, we couldn’t agree more and we put this into practice in our service.

Logging is an ideal example of this. While we always want users to be protected from threats, maybe logging what websites someone visits only needs to happen when the employee is physically in the office, where the organization needs to be conscious of liability concerns. What employees do at home may be their own business, and many of our customers tell us is the case. Heck, they don’t even want to know, but they still want them to be protected. So, we now offer Umbrella customers the ability to selectively determine what information is logged based on the device, group, location, policy, and a growing number of other contexts.

When our customers ask us: “Can I block malware all the time, but only log inappropriate websites when the user is in the office, and do all of this regardless of what device the person is using?” We’re proud to say that the answer is now a resounding yes.

And in addition to offering these features, we also think it’s important for the users themselves to be aware of when their traffic is being logged or not. As such, we’ve also added features to our roaming laptop client to display very clearly to users what policies are being applied regarding logging (and eventually we’ll allow IT admins to share more details on what policies are being enforced). Transparency can serve to build trust between IT admins and their users and turn security into a partnership, rather than a battle.

We have much more to say on the topics of privacy and transparency, much of which is being implemented in code in our products. Everyone wants to be secure, and we live in a world where people use devices for work and personal use, and we want to create the conduits to help people do that in a way that is safe, secure and transparent.

For more details on selective logging, watch the 3 minute video our product team created to show you how it works.

The post Preserving privacy and providing transparency in a world of always-on security appeared first on OpenDNS Blog.

Meet Ally and Erin & grab a cool t-shirt.

The agenda looks great (we’re really looking forward to the Security Smackdown session), which means that if you’re attending the event your schedule will likely be jam-packed. But, we hope you’ll take a few minutes and say hello to our team when you can. I’ll be there with Ally, our VP of Sales Marc Gemassmer, and our CEO David Ulevitch.

In fact, we thought of three great reasons why you should stop by our table!

1. We want your feedback. The best way for us to ensure that the solutions we build are equipped to solve the problems unique to higher ed is by hearing directly from the people that face them every day. Tell us about the challenges you’re dealing with in rolling out malware protection solutions, and what you think it takes to effectively secure your students and faculty. 
2. We have cool t-shirts. Hey, we know that your time is valuable, so if you stop by our table we’ll make it worth your while. We’re giving away our new Umbrella space invaders t-shirts to EDUCAUSE attendees. 
3. Our pitch is really short. It’ll only take us a minute to tell you how Umbrella by OpenDNS secures leading colleges and universities against malware, without any hardware or proxies.

Even if you’re not able to make it to the EDUCAUSE Security Professionals Conference this year, we’d still love for you to see how we’re serving Higher Education IT and security teams today. Check out the Higher Education Solution Overview or leave an idea in the comments on how Higher Ed Web security should transform.

The post 3 Reasons to Meet OpenDNS At EDUCAUSE Security Professionals Conference appeared first on OpenDNS Blog.

Stefan and I met a couple years ago at the World Economic Forum in Davos when OpenDNS was recognized as a Technology Pioneer. He’s an expert in the security and networking space and a seasoned executive and company builder. With Stefan’s guidance, we’ll be able to efficiently and thoughtfully scale our team, processes and infrastructure while building our world-class security company and maintaining the engine of innovation that has been our hallmark.

And the money? Well, having more money will let us add more datacenters, faster, and allow us to increase our overall visibility as a company. To date, our spending has come primarily from the cash we generate from our business. But we’ve been missing out on the opportunities in front of us recently because we didn’t have the cash to capitalize on them. Having some extra cash on hand will help us take advantage of those opportunities when they come up.

Why security?

We have always sat at a unique intersection on the Internet, helping people with navigation, access, and security. So while we’ve considered doing things in the search space, or in the domain name space, it’s the security opportunity that gets us the most excited. Here’s why:

These days, people work wherever they need to get work done, use all kinds of new devices, and access cloud applications without ever using a VPN back to their office HQ. Today’s traditional security appliance approach of “build a firewall around the corporate network” fails to scale or address the reality of how employees actually work today. These changes are disruptive to the security industry and they leave most companies vulnerable to real and serious security threats. In other words, these changes have left IT without visibility, users unprotected, and devices unsecured.

In a world where enterprise applications like Box, Salesforce, NetSuite, and Workday are hosted in the cloud, someone needs to create the network security platform that gives workers a secure conduit to the Internet. And they need to do it in a way that gives IT the security ecosystem that they require. That someone is us. And it’ll be our network and platform that finally give IT a true extension of their network perimeter.

Finally, we think we can do some of it better than other security companies. We’re researching security techniques that will protect against sophisticated threats in a way other vendors can’t. They simply can’t see the traffic we see, and they lack the big data analysts that can create actionable intelligence from a view like this.

But what about the users who trust OpenDNS for safe, fast, smart and reliable DNS?

Over the last seven years, we’ve been a company focused on delivering best in class Internet services so that anyone can connect to the Internet with confidence. That mission is stronger than it’s ever been, and we’ll be using some of the capital we’ve raised to nurture and grow our consumer Internet and DNS services, too.

While we have more than 7,000 business security customers today, we have 50,000,000 daily users – many of whom have been with us for years and years. We thrive on your feedback and your support and I’m always available to hear your feedback or comments on how we can make our services and company better.

Want to help us grow?

Since the very beginning, the contributions and feedback of OpenDNS users has shaped our growth. Even now, there’s no shortage of ways to get involved with our mission of making the Internet better. First off, if you or someone you know is passionate about disrupting the aging and tired security industry, building world-class security services or solving challenging infrastructure problems, tell them about us. Or come work with us yourself! We’re hiring carefully, but aggressively, and we’ve always found that the best people we meet already know us, or are referred to our company by people who do.

A financing event is a testament to the great team we’ve assembled and the great work we’ve already accomplished, and it’s a vote of confidence in our ability to execute on our future potential. So now it’s time to get back to work.

As always, thanks for all your support.

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