Infoblox Serves SDN DNS to Carriers With Trinzic Flex

As infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) has risen in popularity, so has infrastructure's desirability as a target for hackers. Infoblox Trinzic Flex, released on April 6, is a scalable, carrier-class appliance that brings NFV virtualized DDI (DNS, DHCP and IP Address Management) services to carrier and ISP networks.

Trinzic Flex is intended as a transition product for carriers as they navigate a path between traditional on-premises appliances and a full SDN future. As such, Trinzic Flex is an appliance that provides network control, security and automation functions around DDI services. Scalability is a key piece of the service package within Trinzic Flex but service providers and carriers can be only so interested if they can't economically bill for the services offered. Trinzic Flex offers financial flexibility on both ends of the feature chain, allowing service providers to automate provisioning and accounting for their customers, while providing a licensing model that grows the appliance's capacity and cost as the carrier's demand increases.

According to a written statement on the release, bringing all these services together at scale has implications for network security as well. "An often-overlooked security vulnerability revolves around DNS-based exploits that bypass traditional security approaches." Those DNS exploits include the well-documented metasploit vulnerability as well as other DNS poisoning, brute-forcing and DDoS attacks.

In a telephone interview with Infoblox Senior Product Marketing Manager Matt Gowarty, security was one of several topics up for discussion. "We're trying to make sure security becomes a key component from a DNS perspective -- not as an afterthought or a bolt-on," Gowarty said, explaining that most traditional security methods don't focus on DNS.

"By having Infoblox be the authoritative source of information, the single point of truth, we're serving up DNS and see everything from a DNS perspective," he said. By providing a focus on DNS with a heavy security emphasis, DNS becomes another layer in a complete, multi-step security infrastructure.

One of the threats service providers and carriers are most concerned about is DDoS, especially when fueled by millions upon millions of IoT devices. "If you want to take down a lot of people, a carrier's network becomes a big target for a DDoS attack," Gowarty said, explaining, "What we've done with security for the enterprise becomes even more critical for the carriers just because of the scale and size of their network, the breadth and scope."

Trinzic Flex is available now. According to Infoblox, there are currently more than 200 service provider customers for Infoblox DNS, DHCP and IP address appliances. Gowarty said that Trinzic Flex aims to, "...let them leverage the majority of the Infoblox DNS security components that we're known for on a very highly virtualized platform that allows carriers to scale and upgrade very easily to [SDN and NFV] deployments."

— Curtis Franklin, Security Editor, Light Reading