UPDATED 20:02 EST / JANUARY 31 2020

screen-shot-2020-01-31-at-5-49-21-pm SECURITY

Cisco educates enterprises around DNS security within the cloud network

The Domain Name System continues to be a foundational part of how the internet works, and that won’t be really changing any time soon. But as cloud networking grows, attackers continue to use DNS in harmful ways to lure people into cybersecurity traps, and  security around DNS needs to grow within the cloud environment.

“We’re seeing more of an uptake in people understanding that DNS can be used to actually deliver security,” said Meg Diaz (pictured), manager of product marketing for the Security Business Group at Cisco Systems Inc. “[We’re] still educating people about how they can add additional layers of security to their environment — and DNS being really one of them.”

Diaz spoke with Dave Vellante and Stu Miniman, co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Cisco Live event in Barcelona. They discussed DNS security threats and and how DNS can also help secure networks(* Disclosure below.)

DNS attacks threaten cloud security, Cisco Umbrella monitors

As education continues to grow around DNS security threats among enterprises, Cisco Umbrella is a product that Cisco acquired in 2015 to help monitor security in the cloud network environment — including DNS threats. For example, attackers may tweak a URL so that unsuspecting people click on links that look like they are from a trusted service like PayPal.

“There’s a number of different methods that we’re using in [Umbrella] to detect that,” Diaz stated. “We’ll look at the way that the domain is actually written. … We look at the structure of the wording — and sometimes if you can see little characters, or letters, or numbers that are off … and we can detect that that’s happening.”

Umbrella also looks at the infrastructure behind the domain: what the IP address is and other activities that are happening at that IP address, according to Diaz.

“We saw a PayPal domain that was supposedly a U.K. PayPal domain, but it was actually hosted on a bulletproof hosting site — which no legitimate PayPal … domain, would be hosted on. So things like that that we’re able to detect,” she concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Cisco Live event. (* Disclosure: Cisco DevNet sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Cisco nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE

Since you’re here …

Show your support for our mission with our one-click subscription to our YouTube channel (below). The more subscribers we have, the more YouTube will suggest relevant enterprise and emerging technology content to you. Thanks!

Support our mission:    >>>>>>  SUBSCRIBE NOW >>>>>>  to our YouTube channel.

… We’d also like to tell you about our mission and how you can help us fulfill it. SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we don’t have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary on SiliconANGLE — along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams at theCUBE — take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content.

If you like the reporting, video interviews and other ad-free content here, please take a moment to check out a sample of the video content supported by our sponsors, tweet your support, and keep coming back to SiliconANGLE.