Filtering URLs using FlashStart
The advantages of DNS filtering
compared to URL blacklists
Effectiveness over time
Threats to internet browsing have grown over time along with the increase of network activities and uses in various domains. Approximately five billion people log on every day for an average time of seven hours, which gives an unequivocal picture of the exponential growth that exposure to threats is experiencing.
The blacklists of URLs used by cyber security systems in the past are no longer sufficient because network crime is constantly modifying links to malicious pages to circumvent controls. Domains, on the other hand, are purchased space and, therefore, more stable and traceable over time. Of the two billion or so sites created in the new millennium, about 200 million are active, and more than 200,000 are added every day. However, there are actually about 50,000 new domains daily, a number which FlashStart’s artificial intelligence is able to classify, thereby keeping intelligence on DNS effective.
Blocking URLs with DNS
Investigating the activity of the entire domain through machine learning with an extremely high predictive capacity (greater than 92.5 percent) means having the most advanced intelligence and the most up-to-date picture of dangers on the internet. Even if cyber criminals change URLs, FlashStart knows that the domain is classified among the dangerous ones for past malicious activities, so attempts to bypass the controls are useless: the domain is blocked all the same.
The benefits of monitoring DNS with artificial intelligence are not just about hacker threats or malware but also about unwanted contents. If, for example, a corporate executive, principal, or family man wanted to block online games at certain times of day to avoid distractions, he would have to know all the individual URLs and that would be impossible. With FlashStart’s DNS intelligence, on the other hand, everything happens automatically: the filter administrator excludes the category “online games” at a certain time of day, and the DNS filter automatically blocks all those that were classified in the past, plus all of the new domains which are being created every day and which activate platforms for playing games.
