There’s a slogan from one of the big car manufacturers that I can’t quite shake. It’s a short one intended to show that they don’t care much for evolution, they’re the ones spearheading the revolution.
Sometimes, that is how I feel when I look back at the years that’ve passed at Infoblox.
I’ve only been with Infoblox about a year, but the company has been around for 16 years now. That is a long time in IT. Since the beginning, our focus has been on delivering the type of services that analysts at Gartner refer to as DDI solutions, short for DNS, DHCP and IP address management
We’re not the loudest and most visible company, although independent analyst say Infoblox is the industry leader in DDI by a wide margin. We prefer doing good work in favor of shouting about ourselves.
I think that’s something our customers recognize. It’s definitely something we’re quite proud.
But, and I’m thinking of that car company slogan again, being ahead of the curve means that you don’t always get the attention and the recognition you perhaps deserve. Ahead of the curve is a lonely place, especially when you’ve got a message you want to get across. This is something I feel is about to change. Other companies have started talking about the very topics we used to be the only ones pushing for. DNS protection is a great example. We are no longer the only ones talking about the threat of criminals using DNS technology in their attempts to steal intellectual property.
At Infoblox, we recognized this as a growing concern a couple of years ago and began leveraging our knowledge about DNS to help companies and organizations filter out bad DNS traffic from the good. This was in the early stages, and if this was when the cyber criminals began dipping their toes at the shallow end of DNS exploits, they’re now fully submerged at the deep end of the pool. According to Cisco’s latest security report (http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/assets/offers/pdfs/cisco-asr-2016.pdf), DNS plays an important part in more than 90 percent of observed attacks. It is used to gain command and control capabilities, to redirect traffic and/or to exfiltrate sensitive data.
DNS has, simply put, become something that should concern everybody in this industry.
Today we’re able to do real-time analysis of DNS packets, even if they’re inside encrypted tunnels, and make instant decisions based on what we see. And from where I’m standing we’re the only ones able to deliver on this technological level.
This is why the latest Cisco report pleases me so. The pitfalls of DNS security used to be a blind spot for most in this industry. (Cisco even refers to it as just that, “The DNS Blind Spot”, in their report.) Chances are it won’t remain a blind spot for very long.
Until that happens, I’m proud to be here, ahead of the curve and helping our customers as this issue gets the attention it deserves. This is something we as an industry must tackle together. Our acquisition of IID is one way for us to strengthen our contribution to the ecosystem and we all must join forces to be able to handle the ravenous rage that is cybercrime.