Turning DNS Intelligence Into Real-time Defense
In today’s high-speed digital world, security teams are under pressure to move fast. They need to detect, respond to and remediate threats with precision and urgency. The integration of Infoblox Threat Defense™ with Rapid7 Nexpose and InsightVM delivers exactly that. It brings together predictive threat intelligence, DNS-based analytics and rich context from IP address management (IPAM), DNS and DHCP with Rapid7’s deep vulnerability insights and automated response capabilities.
This integration empowers teams with real-time visibility across assets and threats, enabling smarter scan targeting, faster detection and streamlined remediation workflows. Security and network operations teams can act with confidence, knowing they have the context and automation needed to stay ahead of threats and reduce risk across hybrid environments.
Navigating Today’s Complex Threat Landscape
Enterprise networks are no longer confined to a single environment. They stretch across physical infrastructure, virtual machines and hybrid clouds, creating a vast and constantly shifting attack surface. Staying ahead of threats in this landscape requires more than just effort—it demands complete visibility. If you can’t see it, you can’t secure it. At the same time, cyberattackers are getting smarter. AI-driven threats are targeting overlooked infrastructure like DNS to deliver malware, steal data and bypass detection. With more than 90 percent of malware using DNS, it has become a critical early-warning system for threat prevention.
The problem is that traditional security tools aren’t built for this level of complexity. They often miss threats that happen between scans or outside their scope. The longer a vulnerability goes unnoticed, the greater the risk and potential damage. Security teams are also bogged down by disconnected tools and constant alert fatigue, making it harder to respond quickly.
To keep pace with modern threats, organizations need a unified and automated approach. DNS should be treated as a strategic control point, feeding rich telemetry into workflows that integrate seamlessly with platforms like Rapid7.
Smarter Vulnerability Management Through Integration
The integration between Infoblox and Rapid7 delivers a smarter, faster way to stay ahead of threats. By combining DNS telemetry with real-time scanning and asset intelligence, it streamlines asset management and accelerates threat response across hybrid environments. Powerful benefits include:
Real-Time Asset Synchronization with Intelligent Grouping
Automatically sync live IPAM data from Infoblox to Rapid7, ensuring only actively used IPs—such as those with MAC addresses—are included. Smart tag-based grouping enables precise scan policies for dynamic and scalable vulnerability management.
Threat-Triggered Scanning for Faster Incident Response
Instantly launch targeted vulnerability scans the moment a threat is detected by Infoblox DNS Threat Intelligence. Whether it’s a malicious domain or suspicious behavior, Rapid7 assesses the exposed asset in real time—accelerating your threat-to-remediation workflow.
Zero-Day Readiness via DHCP-Powered Discovery
Automatically detect and scan any new device as soon as it receives a DHCP lease from Infoblox. No manual effort needed—your network stays continuously protected, even as new endpoints come online.
SOC Insight-Driven Automation to Prioritize Risk
Transform SOC alerts into action. When Infoblox identifies critical behaviors like DNS tunneling or data exfiltration, Rapid7 instantly scans the associated asset, empowering your team to act faster and smarter in high-risk situations.
Fine-Grained Control with Smart Exclusions and Enrichment
Easily exclude trusted IP ranges from scans while enriching asset records with vulnerability data. Highlight critical risks, enhance reporting and ensure your security teams focus only on what truly matters—without the noise.
A Case Study In Success
Founded over 50 years ago, this U.S.-based media and meteorology company delivers weather forecasts, alerts and news to over 1.5 billion people worldwide. It provides data for more than 3.5 million locations using 170 forecasting models and expert analysis through its apps and television network. With a team of 500 professionals, including 100 meteorologists, the company combines data, technology and insights to improve safety, reduce losses and support real-time decision-making.
To support global operations, the company upgraded its network with Infoblox’s DDI solution, deploying hardened appliances, Grid Manager, internal DNS, DHCP failover and DNS recursion. These enhancements improved visibility and resiliency. Reporting and Analytics added customizable dashboards, predictive insights and visualizations for performance, security and compliance. Security remained a priority, and the IT team required seamless integration with existing tools.
Using Rapid7 SIEM1 for threat detection and response, the company found Infoblox’s Security Ecosystem and Rapid7 integration to be a strong fit. The integration delivered immediate value and flexibility for future tools. After a successful two-month proof of concept, the company deployed Threat Defense to secure DNS and enhance alerting. It also added DNS Threat Insight to detect and block DNS data exfiltration, along with TIDE for threat feed distribution and Dossier for threat lookups.
The Bottom Line
The integration of Infoblox Threat Defense with Rapid7 InsightVM marks a major advancement in cybersecurity operations. It replaces fragmented, manual processes with automated, intelligence-driven workflows that reduce dwell time and eliminate blind spots. By using DNS as a strategic control point and combining it with real-time asset discovery, predictive threat intelligence and event-triggered scanning, organizations can respond to threats with greater speed and accuracy.
With enriched context from IPAM, DHCP and DNS telemetry, security teams can prioritize risks more effectively, remediate faster and maintain continuous protection across hybrid environments.
Here is our Solution Note on this integration
Footnotes
- Global Weather Service Delivers Accurate Forecasts with Modernized Network and Security Protection, Infoblox, 2023.
