DNS Alerts-as-a-Service

Plenty of Websites have incorrect Domain Name Service (DNS) settings, but their owners typically don’t find out until it’s too late and their servers stop responding, or get hacked. DNSstuff.com is now offering a round-the-clock DNS alert service that lets organizations fine-tune automatic notifications of their DNS-related problems.

“There’s not a lot of knowledge around DNS in the enterprise. That’s one of the key reasons we preconfigure and solve these problems for you,” says Rich Person, CEO of DNSstuff.com, which in a recent user survey found that nearly 70 percent of active domains are configured incorrectly.

DNS servers are prone to vulnerabilities, mainly due to human error in configuring them. They also are prone to hacks, such as attacker breaking into a registrar account and changing the name servers to which the domain is attached.

“The number of vulnerabilities is increasing daily. There are a lot of opportunities to subvert DNS... and then it can compromise a host file, too,” says Paul Parisi, CTO of DNSstuff.com.

The new version of DNSalerts also provides instructions for fixing the problems it spots, Parisi says, and eventually will add a Wiki-based knowledge base.

DNS inventor Paul Mockapetris says the DNSstuff service is an easy alternative to doing it yourself. “DNSStuff's offering basically costs the same as an hour or two of your highest level sysadmin's time, and works 24/7, and has the external viewing done, and is slicker than what you could roll on your own,” says Mockapetris, chief scientist and chairman of the board for network naming and address vendor Nominum. “It's not free, but it's cheap, easy, and effective.”

The DNSalerts 2.0 service is priced at $99 a year per domain.

— Kelly Jackson Higgins, Senior Editor, Dark Reading