Cash is always a scarce resource for any business, but especially  small and medium businesses (SMEs). This is particularly true in today's tough economic environment, with it complete lack of available credit. One of the ways to conserve cash, and still enhance your business's IT infrastructure, is to take advantage of open source, and the many free cloud computing services that are offered on the Internet today.  One such service is OpenDNS, a free DNS service.

OpenDNS - More than just DNS

OpenDNS (http://www.opendns.com) provides DNS servers for use in domain name resolution to the public. You can simply update your ADSL router's or company firewall's DNS settings to point to their DNS servers, namely ( 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220). OpenDNS servers can even be used on your laptop and home computers if desired.  So what do you get when you make use of OpenDNS servers?

If a public DNS service was all the OpenDNS provided, there would be no compelling reason to change your current DNS servers that you use for lookup, the ones usually provided by your Internet service provider (ISP). OpenDNS, however provides extra services when it comes to resolving domain names and most of them are free. These are the services I cover in this article.

Secure, reliable DNS lookup for your network

The first benefit of using OpenDNS, is that they have a global network of servers, which allow for fast DNS resolution and fail-over support, so your Internet connection will not become unusable because your ISP's DNS servers are off-line. Besides this, OpenDNS servers are maintained with the latest security patches and fixes. Many ISPs fail to maintain their DNS servers with the appropriate patches, fixes or upgrades, because it is a secondary service for them, and this can lead to security vulnerabilities for your network!  This is what happened in 2008 with the major security hole found in the base architecture of the DSN service. The vulnerability was so significant that urgent appeals were made for ISPs, or anyone running a DNS server, to patch their machines immediately. Many server were not patched within a reasonable period of time  and to this day many remain so.

It is scary to think that your network can become vunerable because of a key service you rely on from a third party. Since OpenDNS is all about providing a reliable DNS service, their servers are always patched and updated in a timely manner.

Protection from Phishing sites

I am sure you have all received fraudulent emails claiming to be sent by your bank or credit card company, asking you to login to your online account to update your details, or change your password? Usually these emails direct the user to a fraudulent site via embedded links to web sites. Theses sites are referred to as phishing sites. A phishing scam, is the attempt to gain fraudulent access to username and passwords, by criminals who put up web sites masquerading as legitimate banking or other secure service sites.

Many businesses are forced to simply rely on their staff taking the correct action when phishing emails are received, but the criminals are getting smarter at social engineering and often phishing sites can be unintentionally accessed via other means, i.e clicking a link in a forum, or even an advert for example. OpenDNS provides protection against these kind of attacks by preventing access to any site that has been identified as a phishing site. OpenDNS has a constantly updated database of all the know phishing sites which it checks any requested DNS look up against. If the site has been flagged as fraudulent, the user is prevented from accessing the site.

Free content filtering

If you sign up for a free account on openDNS, you can also make use of their free content-filtering service. This is great for businesses, or if you wish to provide some kind of protection for your connection at home for children for example.  You can configure your OpenDNS account  to block phishing sites, the default, and other content such as adult site, adverts, anonymous proxies,  and more. This is great functionality for a small business that is looking to ensure its Internet connection is not being abused by staff or for a parent wishing to provide some level of protection for their children when they browse the Internet.

Detailed Statistics

Lastly, if you have a free account with OpenDNS, you can get access to detailed DNS statistics. This will tell you how many sites have been blocked and for what reason. It will also show you the most popular sites visited on your network, allowing you to decide whether to close social network site such as Facebook or not. 

Start using cloud computing to save cost and enhance your business IT infrastructure

So with all these great, cloud computing, services becoming available, you can now take advantage of them to enhace your network and save money at the same time! At Jumping Bean, we provide our customers with the most cost-effective solutions to their needs by integrating the best loud computing and open source projects in a manner which allows business to exploit these resources whilst ensuring flexibility. Contact us for a free review of your network.