DNS Filtering

Staying safe in today’s world is more important than ever. With all our personal information slowly transitioning to a digital environment, we must make sure that no one can access it, because losing our data creates a risk of identity theft, blackmail, and much more. But how to stay safe with as little intrusion into the users` experience as possible?

One of the means to achieve that is the use of DNS filtering. Whalebone uses filtering to block requests to malicious websites, and to adjust the behavior when accessing a particular content (for further reference, see the Parental Control feature description). Whalebone’s DNS resolver translates all requests unless they are for a malicious domain (or another blocked content, like an advertisement). That’s the only case when the resolver interferes with the DNS resolution process. Then it applies the proper network and end-customer policies. The DNS resolver uses locally cached data obtained from the Whalebone cloud to identify threats and hosts the redirection page which is displayed to the users in case of detection of a malicious domain. The redirection page is fully customizable by the Telco – custom HTML, CSS, and Javascript code can be applied to the blocking page ( code snippets such as the bypass code are also made available). When a user tries to access a malicious domain, the DNS request gets blocked, which means that the user will get an answer that leads to the redirection page hosted on the resolver.

In contrast to other, non-DNS-based telco security products on the market, it’s even possible to allow the user to bypass the blocking and continue to the destination website should they desire it. It works directly on the DNS level. The user informs the resolver that they wish to continue to the website and a new attempt to establish the connection is started. In this case, Whalebone does not proxy the subsequent connection and cannot access any sensitive information or cause any compatibility issue to the application.