Norton DNS: Symantec Provides an Alternative to OpenDNS and Google DNS
Symantec announced Norton Everywhere, a three-part initiative to take Norton beyond the PC and extend trust to new devices and consumer applications. The initiative spans the areas of mobile safety, web safety across any device and embedded services on smart devices. Symantec also announced Norton DNS, a component of Norton Everywhere.
Norton DNS provides alternative DNS servers that can be used by any Internet-connected device. It has been designed to provide a safer, more reliable, and faster Internet experience by delivering a variety of basic protection services like anti-phishing, anti-malware and anti-spyware via Norton verified web filtering.
Based on the DNS, which stands for Domain Name Service or Domain Name Server. The DNS servers provide the translation from a URL (e.g. www.mytechguide.org) to an IP address (e.g. 69.163.228.227) that the computers and routers can understand to get the Web page to show up on your display. Using this DNS technology, Norton is able to deliver another layer of security to both the mobile and PC environments. Every time a user navigates to a URL while using Norton DNS, the URL will be verified first.
One form of malicious attack involves “poisoning” the information on the DNS server to redirect unsuspecting users to malicious sites. For example, an attacker could access an insecure DNS server and change the IP address associated with “www.paypal.com” to point to a different server. When users that rely on that DNS server try to visit “www.paypal.com” they are redirected to the malicious site. Some countries use the domain name system to block access to web contents and other resources. Using a different DNS provider then can prove beneficial and can also speed up domain lookup times, reduce web censorship and block custom error pages by the Internet providers.
There are other public DNS services–namely OpenDNS and Google Public DNS. Google’s DNS service, like Symantec’s, is designed to provide a faster and more secure Web surfing experience. Like Symantec’s Norton DNS, the Google Public DNS also provides protection against DNS cache poisoning and other common DNS threats.
The Norton DNS service works by filtering the DNS requests that are automatically created when you visit a Web page to determine if they are associated with fraud, spyware, malware or objectionable content such as pornography or violence.
Symantec provides an in-depth instructions for setting up Norton DNS for Windows and Mac OS X on the official Norton DNS website.
What do you think about Norton DNS? Will you use it or stick with your current DNS provided by your ISP or with OpenDNS or Google DNS? Tell us what you think through comments below.
