Washington, DC-based provider of DNS content filtering and threat protection solutions, DNSFilter closed a $30m series A funding round led by investment firm Insight Partners.
CEO Ken Carnesi said the proceeds, which bring DNSFilter’s total raised to $36m, will be invested toward product development and strategic initiatives including partnerships, as well as expanding the company’s workforce.
DNSFilter aims to combat the growing threats with a service designed to protect against DNS-originated phishing, malware, ransomware, and more. Its network, which spans across 48 datacenters, provides domain analysis that’s exported to security reports as well as logs.
DNS translates internet domain names like “www.example.com” into IP addresses (e.g., 172.10.254.1) to locate servers and route data worldwide. A malicious actor can use DNS to direct a query to the wrong website or intercept an email, for example. That’s perhaps why security analysts at Infoblox in a recent whitepaper called DNS “a bellwether for malicious activity.”
One of DNSFilter’s biggest focuses is threat identification accuracy by leveraging AI. The AI scans identify anomalies and potential vectors for malware, ransomware, phishing, deception, and fraud. In 2018, the company acquired Web Shrinker, which provided website screenshot and API services, leveraging machine learning to identify threats and domains in real time.
Another thing about DNSFilter’s AI is that customers are central to the training model. As the platform scans more websites, it learns how threats are evolving, and DNSFilter’s security researchers check its work — helping the company to catch 76% of domain-based threats, it claimed. Customer data is enabling DNSFiler to explore the concept of DNS fingerprinting, which would allow the platform to better understand behaviour happening within an environment based on the types of queries occurring.
Cisco found in 2016 that 90% of malware programs use DNS to carry out campaigns. And according to IDC, organisations faced an average of more than nine DNS attacks in 2019, an increase of 34% year-over-year. Costs went up 49% compared with 2018, meaning that one in five businesses lost just over $1m per attack.
This explains how the company continues to scale up. DNSFilter currently scans billions of domains daily for more than 185,000 end users and over 14,000 brands including Lenovo, Newegg, The Salvation Army, and Nvidia, catching threats an average of 5 days before “static feed” competitors. By the end of 2021, DNSFilter will block more than 1.1 million threats every 24 hours.
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