DNS Security Problems Widespread and Poorly Understood: Study

Nearly half of IT and business professionals surveyed by Mazerov Research reported a security compromise of their Domain Name System servers, despite spending money on overlapping security products.

The independent study of 465 people, conducted on behalf of Secure64, found that "[n]early half (45%) of the participants had experienced a compromise of either their internal, external or caching DNS servers."

Sixty-eight percent of respondents attributed their DNS security problems to malware. Forty-eight percent cited denial of service attacks. Thirty-six percent pointed to cache poisoning (injecting false information into DNS caches). Twenty-three percent indicated pharming (redirecting document requests from one Web site to another).

"Perhaps the most ironic aspect of this part of the survey is that DNS is a misunderstood part of the IT infrastructure," the survey states. "While 37% indicated that the loss of e-mail and 13% indicated that the loss of access to the Web would be the most catastrophic, the fact is that with the loss of DNS, all of these services would be largely unreachable. This indicates a clear misunderstanding of the role of DNS protection among the IT community, even among high-level IT management."

Given the expected impact that a loss of Internet connectivity would have on their businesses " 40% predicted significant revenue loss, 39% predicted brand damage, 30% predicted customer loss, and 12% predicted going out of business " there's a good argument for investing in DNS protection, or at least understanding the implications of a DNS failure.