URL filtering and DNS filtering are great measures against the dangers of the Internet. They create the barriers necessary to significantly reduce the attack surface and provide essential protection from ever-increasing cyber threats.
Both solutions operate with the help of Web Reputation Services. These services assess online sites and assign a risk score based on the site’s:
However, not everyone is clear on when either DNS or URL filtering is a better security measure – and that’s what you’ll discover today.
While web and email traffic often take center stage in cybersecurity, DNS, the foundation of internet communication, is frequently overlooked. Its distributed nature and reliance on UDP make it susceptible to attacks. Recent campaigns, like the one leveraging DuckDNS, highlight the dangers.
Malicious subdomains were used to distribute
Solutions like Check Point’s SASE zero-management DNS filtering offer easy setup and enhanced network protection.
There are several areas in which URL filtering is a significant addition to DNS filtering. It’s vital that your security solution addresses these points, which can be blind spots for DNS filtering alone.
One of the components of our Secure Web Gateway is Web (URL) Filtering. While DNS filtering focuses on blocking domains, URL filtering allows you to protect users by blocking access to specific URLs. In contrast to DNS filtering, URL filtering focuses on HTTP/HTTPS traffic and enables user-centric rules for:
So, URL filtering allows a more granular implementation of web access rules, for a true “zero trust” approach.
With the help of TLS inspection, which allows visibility into encrypted HTTPS traffic, URL filter rules will protect and monitor employees even when they are not connected to the corporate network.
By blocking websites such as:
IT managers can take a preventative step to block malware downloads and phishing attempts.
The DNS over HTTPS (DoH) protocol leverages HTTPS to encrypt DNS traffic and has been gaining more popularity. This protocol prevents DNS traffic from being forged by attackers, but its use of HTTPS makes it invisible for DNS filtering solutions.
URL filtering inspects this traffic.
A full Secure Web Gateway pairs URL filtering with an anti-malware engine, which prevents malware at the point of entry. Malware detection capabilities are crucial, protecting users from malicious attacks on the Internet.
These attacks may quickly spread in the organizational network, infecting one host after another.
A Secure Web Gateway, including both URL filtering and Malware Protection, will prevent users and hosts from infection at the point of entry, securing both employee devices and the corporate network.
In summary, the best security practice would be to enable both DNS filtering and URL filtering as part of a Secure Web Gateway.
While DNS filtering provides protection for all types of traffic and can prevent access to malicious domains, URL web filtering provides a deeper and tighter level of control and security. URL filtering adds the ability to granularly define access control to specific sites, and as part of a Secure Web Gateway is paired with a full anti-malware inspection of the traffic.
The best way to secure your company from cyber attacks is by combining both DNS filtering and URL web filtering for total network security, significantly reducing the attack surface and decreasing the chance of malware, ransomware and other attacks.
Book a FREE demo now.