We don’t often take to the blog to talk about some of the more advanced OpenDNS Enterprise security features, like our malware and botnet protection, but we know a lot of organizations rely on them to keep their networks secure. Today, I’d like to talk a little more about how our malware and botnet protection works, and why we’ve started seeing so many organizations move to OpenDNS Enterprise primarily for that added layer of internet security.

As with all of the advanced functionality OpenDNS has built atop our superfast recursive DNS service for businesses and schools – like the Web content filtering, phishing protection, and stats available in OpenDNS Enterprise –  our malware and botnet protection innovates on traditional offerings, and it works on any device connected to the network (including, say, an iPad that an employee brought from home).

OpenDNS blocks malware and botnet attacks before they can infect a network. We aren’t terminating an existing malicious connection, or cleaning up a breach that’s already occurred; as soon as OpenDNS sees an attempted connection to a malicious domain or IP address, we block it. A side benefit is that if an infected device is brought on to a protected network, OpenDNS can make sure that the infection doesn’t spread to other connected devices on the network if they do so via external command and control.

OpenDNS Dashboard Malware Notice

If you’re wondering why this matters: when Vanderbilt University switched to OpenDNS Enterprise in 2010, they blocked 1.5 million malware attacks in the first four months following the deployment. That’s 1.5 million potential data leaks thwarted, and 1.5 million device cleanups avoided.

It’s certainly something to think about, as the threat of malware and botnet attacks continues to escalate.  If you don’t have any malware or botnet protection for your organization, or you’re thinking about adding another layer of protection to your network, consider trying out OpenDNS Enterprise as your first line of defense.

We’ve been hearing some pretty exciting stories from our customers lately and (though we’d love to share them all with you) we’ve selected some of the most interesting to showcase right here on the blog. We’ll be sharing these unique use cases of OpenDNS Enterprise with you over the next few months in a new series we’re calling Field Reports.

We couldn’t wait to share the story of Shafer’s Tours, which flexibly accommodates custom charters and tours for nearly-endless East Coast and Mid-Atlantic destinations. Operating more than a dozen luxury motor coaches, and serving a wide variety of groups that charter the buses and join the tours, the Safer’s Tours IT team was faced with an interesting challenge: How do you secure the Wi-Fi hotspot on a moving target? The team exhausted countless ideas for how they could conserve precious bandwidth onboard the buses, and prevent malware from being downloaded over the network, but they continued to encounter the same two issues: Installing appliances on every bus is cost prohibitive, and no adjustments or monitoring could be made to the network while the buses were in motion.

As luck would have it, Tim Watson, IT manager and safety director for Shafer’s Tours, was separately evaluating OpenDNS Enterprise for use on Shafer’s Tours corporate network. He quickly realized that the unique way OpenDNS Enterprise handles content filtering and malware protection makes it the ideal solution for securing his moving targets, too. In no time, his team was able to set up OpenDNS on both Shafer’s Tours’ corporate network and the individual WI-Fi hotspots for the buses without installing any appliances or provisioning any software. And, because OpenDNS Enterprise settings can be changed remotely, and updates are delivered in real-time in the cloud, they don’t have to worry about waiting for buses to return to home base to make changes.

Since setting up OpenDNS Enterprise, the Shafer Tours IT team hasn’t looked back. But don’t take our word for it. The Shafer’s Tours IT team tells us, “OpenDNS Enterprise is the only service that makes sense.” You can read more about how Shafer’s Tours is using OpenDNS here.

If your company is using OpenDNS Enterprise to solve an interesting problem, give us a shout at Success@OpenDNS.com. We’d love to share it right here.

OpenDNS.com has been redesigned to make resources more readily-available, and offer more insight into why OpenDNS is the best way to secure your network from threats at the DNS layer.

Let’s go for a quick tour:

• The Technology section is brand new. Here we dive into how OpenDNS works, including details about our sophisticated Anycast routing technology and globally-distributed network. We also show you why OpenDNS is so fast and so reliable, and how our service has been designed from the ground up to ensure 100% uptime. The new section includes an interactive network map that tells you which of our 12 global datacenters is answering your DNS requests and stats about total DNS requests — per day and even per second.

• We made the Business Solutions and Home Solutions more obvious in order to get people to the information they need faster. Whether you’re a SysAdmin looking for information about how our malware protection works, a mom or dad looking for a straightforward way to keep kids safe online, or just want to sign up for Premium DNS, the new site is tailored to ensure your questions get answered in fewer clicks.

• The Resources section is a great place to find out who is using OpenDNS and how. Browse the customer showcase and get to know the trusted brands that rely on OpenDNS every day, meet our partners or find out why companies like yours are using OpenDNS. This section is jam-packed with case studies, data sheets and even an FAQ.

Today we announced that Shea Homes, the largest privately-held homebuilder in the U.S. has deployed and is experiencing great success with OpenDNS Enterprise. J.F. Shea Co., its parent company, is also using OpenDNS Enterprise. For us, its hugely exciting that the company America trusts to build our homes and engineering marvels has trusted OpenDNS Enterprise with the task of protecting its networks and employees from malware and unsafe content.

It’s no easy task to be one of the nation’s largest and most respected homebuilders and civil contractors. Aside from a strong commitment to excellence and customer satisfaction, and building global landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam, it also means a constant and significant amount of corporate growth. For Shea Homes and parent company J.F. Shea Co, keeping up with that rapid growth meant purchasing, deploying and managing new malware protection and content filtering appliances for its various networks every time a new office was added, or more bandwidth was needed. The company and its subsidiary were stuck in an ugly cycle of appliance management, a story that’s all too familiar for many rapidly growing organizations. But escaping the cycle was not only easy, it resulted in significant savings of both time and resources.

The J.F. Shea Co. and its divisions were early adopters of cloud-based services like OpenDNS Enterprise because the move let the companies free up significant IT budget and time, and downsize datacenters across their distributed locations. This was especially significant during the economic downturn that left the building industry particularly hard hit. Notably, J.F. Shea Co.’s cloud-based evolution was rooted in the transition to OpenDNS Enterprise. Shea Homes soon followed by adopting OpenDNS Enterprise for all of its North Carolina locations. The organizations not only leverage OpenDNS Enterprise for its unique ability to block malware and botnets at the DNS level, but also for the added protection the organizations receive by filtering malicious sites that are frequently the sources of such malware.

Using OpenDNS Enterprise afforded J.F. Shea Co. a savings of more than $25,000 and gave Shea Homes the ability to downsize its datacenters and let its IT team focus more closely on proactive maintenance. We’re excited to say that OpenDNS Enterprise does this each day for companies large and small. And we love spreading those stories, helping other SysAdmins around the world learn how OpenDNS Enterprise can do the same for them. If you have questions about OpenDNS Enterprise, or want to learn how it can help your business stay safe from malware or inappropriate content, join our webinar next Wednesday, Oct. 26.

If you’re using OpenDNS at work and want to share your success story, email Success@OpenDNS.com.

We love hearing stories from our users about how they’re using OpenDNS, so much in fact, that we frequently ask our Facebook friends and Twitter followers to tell us about their experiences. And when Dustin Springman, network director for the South Georgia Regional Information Technology Authority (SGRITA), recently told us a story, we thought it was so humbling and inspiring we just had to share it with you.

It’s no secret that we think OpenDNS has the absolute best users of any security company out there. And, that while we work hard to spread the word, it’s the users themselves who are our best ambassadors. But Dustin has taken it to the next level. Working with SGRITA, Dustin has universally deployed OpenDNS across networks that serve more than 15,000 people.

After dealing with the unreliable DNS offered by his local ISP for too long, Dustin set up OpenDNS and never looked back. He loved the service so much that he began sharing his success with friends and neighbors, even going the extra mile to set it up on their machines.

But his passion for OpenDNS didn’t stop there. At the time OpenDNS announced it was offering a cloud-based content filtering solution, Dustin was working for SGRITA and advising many K-12 schools on Web security. He quickly realized the dramatic impact OpenDNS could have on K-12 schools that face limited IT resources yet still need to meet CIPA compliance. Springman educated local school districts on the benefits of using OpenDNS and deployed the service universally across all of the school networks SGRITA managed.

When we announced OpenDNS Enterprise to protect businesses from malware, Dustin once again sensed that OpenDNS was reading his mind. SGRITA was troubleshooting an alarming amount of malware and botnet activity for the business networks it served, and he knew DNS level malware prevention was a unique solution. Dustin advocated that all the business networks SGRITA served explore and institute OpenDNS to cure their malware woes.

Today Dustin is an active participant in the OpenDNS community: Tagging domains in the Domain Tagging system and helping make OpenDNS Web content filtering more effective, submitting ideas in IdeaBank about ways OpenDNS can be even better and more feature-rich, helping other users by answering questions in the Forums. Plus, he’s following Facebook and Twitter for the latest updates and ensuring OpenDNS is set up on all the networks SGRITA manages.

And we know that there are thousands more OpenDNS users just like Dustin. So to all of you who have convinced your CTO to deploy OpenDNS across your company’s network, educated your local school board on OpenDNS so your kid was as safe at school as she is under your roof, or simply installed OpenDNS for your parents, we say: Thanks a million. We hope that as we continue to add features and products that will benefit your colleagues, friends or community you’ll help us spread the word and create a safer Internet for everyone.

Give us the chance to thank you for spreading the word on OpenDNS: Email your story to success@OpenDNS.com.

A recent survey of IT Managers revealed that dealing with proxies and anonymizers — websites that allow users on a network to bypass Web content filtering that’s been set up — is a major headache: 87 percent of IT managers in education think proxies are a problem, followed by 56 percent in the private sector and 44 percent in the public sector. The same study revealed that IT Managers are spending almost 30 percent more time this year dealing with proxy sites than they did last year.

We know (and you know) you’ve got better things to do with your time than deal with tracking down the latest proxies and anonymizers and manually blocking them.

That’s why we’ve offered this as a built in feature for more than three years. Like all of OpenDNS’ Web content filtering categories, the Proxy/Anonymizer category is constantly updated, thanks to the Domain Tagging community’s hard work.

To make sure you’re blocking proxies head to the dashboard, select your network and choose “Web Content Filtering.” From there, make sure to choose “Proxy/Anonymizer” as one of your categories to block. Once you do that, you can rest easy knowing what’s blocked on your network is blocked.

A month ago we gave you a sneak peek at the newest members of the OpenDNS family – OpenDNS Deluxe and OpenDNS Enterprise. Feedback since then has been phenomenal and so many of you are interested in the new, more feature-rich services.

We’re hosting a webinar next week on Wednesday, October 21 at 10 am PST to give you all of the details about what the new services will include. OpenDNS Founder David Ulevitch will host with a special guest from Nvidia, one of the first companies to deploy OpenDNS Enterprise. In the webinar we’ll:

• Go feature-by-feature over the new services.
• Give you a snapshot of the main differences between the new services and the free service you use and love today.

We know you’re busy, so like all of our webinars, we’ll keep this one to just 30 minutes.

Sign up here.

Today is a big day for OpenDNS. I’m thrilled to tell you we’ve listened to your feedback and are giving you what you want: two new versions of OpenDNS designed to meet the unique needs of professional users and businesses of all sizes.

OpenDNS has had tremendous success in our quest to improve the Internet since we launched the service three years ago — To make it safer, faster, smarter and more reliable. Our users come from all over the world and reflect a diverse set of people. Our users have homes with children, they’re some of the country’s largest school districts – Baltimore and Detroit public school systems to name a few – and they’re businesses of all sizes, from mom and pop shops to some of the world’s most trusted, global brands.

On the consumer front, we are seeing more and more users start using our service through our fantastic partners like NETGEAR and we’ve also just released a new OpenDNS Dynamic Updater client to help make it easier to ensure you are using OpenDNS at all times.

But there are some features that businesses need that aren’t included in the classic version of OpenDNS you are using today. And that’s where OpenDNS Deluxe and OpenDNS Enterprise come in. The new services have features that are tailored for both a savvier “prosumer” customer as well as larger businesses. They include a wide variety of customizations and new features that help us better integrate into more complex networks and organizations. And, they come with one of our most requested “features,” the option to easily remove the advertisements (and wildcard NXDOMAIN) from the OpenDNS experience. An option that fits in with our goal of providing people the best DNS experience possible, however they choose to configure and experience it.

Here at OpenDNS headquarters in San Francisco the entire engineering team is working in some capacity on making these services great, while working on making our classic service even better. In fact, we’ve built out even more infrastructure and more capacity, something that will benefit everyone using OpenDNS as a whole.

Today, we have 25 customers currently using our new services in Early Access, and the services will be Generally Available to anyone later this year.

I personally invite anyone who’s interested in the new service to apply for Early Access by filling out a form we’ve put online here.

Feedback welcomed in the comments, as always.