Open DNS web page

OpenDNS provides an extra security layer beyond your standard Anti Virus. It prides itself in winning the battle against Cybercrime Ransomware such as Cyrptowall/Cryptolocker and similar.

So how does OpenDNS work?

OpenDNS works at the DNS layer of your internet communication. DNS is the lookup of domain names to IP addresses to locate where on the internet the resource you are trying to access to stored. For example it is easier to remember www.google.com than it is to remember 216.58.208.164. Imagine having to remember all of those IP addresses to access a website! The technology that provides us with that service is called a DNS server.

What is Ransomware?

Ransomware is a malicious type of virus that is likely to encrypt your files with no recovery except to restore from backup.

What does OpenDNS do to protect against Ransomware?

Once infected with Ransomware your machine will try and contact a Ransomware server to download malicious code to destroy your files. It will usually carry this out by contacting the server via hostname such as www.crypto.com (or something better disguised!). OpenDNS knows about these malicious servers, so when your machine tries to phone home via querying the OpenDNS server for www.crtpto.com, OpenDNS will redirect you to a safe IP address instead of he real one, saving your data!

So you have Anti-Virus and OpenDNS. Are you completely safe?

No. The creators of these types of infection are always trying to beat the system. When they invent new ways to beat the system, Anti-Virus vendors do not know about it until the general public have reported it. Common sense is the number 1 level of protection. If you don’t trust it, don’t open it!

For more information on our OpenDNS service, please contact us today.