The Easiest Security Win Most Small Businesses Miss

Most small businesses we talk to have antivirus software installed. Many have a firewall in place. But almost none of them have done anything about their DNS — and that is one of the easiest security wins available.

What DNS Does and Why It Matters

DNS is what translates a website name into an IP address so your computer knows where to go. Every time you visit a website, check your email, or open an app, a DNS request is made. The problem is that standard DNS does all of this in plaintext. Anyone on your network — or your internet service provider — can see exactly which sites you and your employees are visiting.

That is a privacy issue on its own. But the bigger risk is what happens when someone visits a site they should not.

How Secure DNS Stops Threats Early

When an employee clicks a phishing link or stumbles onto a compromised website, the request starts with DNS. If that request resolves normally, the connection goes through and the damage begins. But if you are using a Secure DNS service that recognizes the domain as malicious, the request is blocked before anything ever loads. No page. No payload. No problem.

How NerdSec’s Secure DNS Works

This is what NerdSec’s Secure DNS does. It is a DNS over HTTPS service, which means your DNS requests are encrypted — keeping them private from anyone trying to snoop. On top of that, it prevents known malicious domains from resolving at all.

It runs quietly in the background. There is nothing for your employees to learn or manage. And it is fast — our average lookup time is around 16 milliseconds. Over the last 24 hours alone, we handled over 368,000 DNS requests with zero errors. We use random identifiers in our logs, so there is no personally identifying data being stored.

What’s Next

We are continuing to build on this foundation, with features like custom filtering on the way. But even as it stands today, Secure DNS is one of the simplest and most impactful things a small business can do to improve its security posture.

If you are curious about how it works or want to try it out, reach out to us at sales@nerdsec.io. We are happy to walk you through it.