DNS Security – A Critical Element of the Shift to Long-Term Remote Work

Twenty months into the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work is no longer a temporary situation but the status quo for many. In fact, recently Gartner forecasts indicated that by the close of this year, 51% of knowledge workers worldwide are expected to be working remotely, up from 27% just two years ago. With an estimate of 32% of all employees worldwide expected to work remotely by the end of 2021, it is clear that the abrupt shift to remote work during the pandemic overturned firmly entrenched expectations about how and where work should be conducted.

As organizations now shift to a future of work model and seek to bullet-proof a potentially permanent hybrid workforce, CISOs and IT directors will have a series of critical decisions to make around how to enhance the security of their activities and resources within and outside their protected walls. A key element of reducing potential security issues and ensuring smooth business operations is improving control over the traffic between each remote worker and the organization’s applications, in short, DNS security.

According to the IDC 2021 Global DNS Threat Report, 55% of respondents across geographies and industries see DNS security as critical for protecting remote workforces. Respondents see improving control over the traffic between each remote worker and the organization’s applications as key for smooth business operations and reducing the potential of security issues that may increase the frequency and cost of DNS attacks. Specifically DoH, DNS over HTTPS, presents a new opportunity for organizations operating with remote workers, which brings additional complexity in managing application access and overall security. However, DoH also brings concerns over privacy, as confirmed by 75% of respondents in the report saying they consider DoH via public providers to be a main risk.

EfficientIP’s DoH and DNS security solutions to protect users and devices even when they are outside the physical walls of the organization.

To better protect workers and sensitive data, the system allows organizations to extend their private DNS recursive service and manage the DoH themselves, rather than relying on DoH with untrusted DNS services that can reveal the applications and data that workers are using. 51% of organizations surveyed in the Threat Report say they are already going down this route of setting up a private DoH system.

These DNS solutions combine traffic analysis and intelligent filtering to bring an essential layer of defense for any worker in the organization, whether working from the corporate buildings, from a remote facility, from home or even from an airport or a café.

Similarly, EfficientIP’s SOLIDserver DNS security solution can easily manage DoH either in a native environment or integrated in a wider ecosystem where DoH is managed by software edge solutions closest to the users. Through applying the same security policies for resident and remote workers, the I&O teams enhance the overall security of the IT systems to protect the organization’s users and data. Amid increased cyber-attacks through malware, backdoors, denial of service and supply chain code modification, this controlled infrastructure approach brings maximum value with minimum effort, with benefits including strengthened security, simplified network management and internal control.

Before the pandemic, a company’s first line of defense against a cyber security breach was its people. However, with rapidly increasing adoption of work-from-anywhere, DNS security is more complicated than ever before. As remote work for many is here to stay and the threat of cyber-attacks is increasing, IT and cybersecurity professionals will need to explore and implement these new technologies and solutions to protect their organization’s data and maintain the security of their company’s online activities.