Given the significant downtime from reported incidents in 2023, it is becoming increasingly evident that businesses should consider including secondary DNS providers as a part of their digital resilience strategy. After all, the role of a DNS server is to prevent service disruptions and minimize financial and reputational damage from DNS-related attacks.
In this blog, we’ll go over:
- A secondary DNS
- Benefits of a secondary DNS
- How a secondary DNS plays a vital role in mitigating downtime incidents
What is secondary DNS?
A secondary DNS server is a backup to the primary DNS server. The primary DNS server answers queries about your domain and its associated services. However, the secondary DNS server holds a read-only copy of the DNS records from the primary server. Its role is to ensure continuity and resilience in case the primary DNS server is unavailable due to maintenance, cyber-attacks, or technical failures. The secondary DNS server steps in to resolve queries, ensuring that the service remains uninterrupted.
The role of secondary DNS servers in mitigating downtime.
The role of a secondary DNS server is about more than just maintaining the availability of online services. It’s about ensuring your business can continue to operate even in the face of disruptions. By providing redundancy, secondary DNS servers play a pivotal role in a multi-layered defense strategy. Suppose the primary DNS provider experiences an outage due to a cyber attack, hardware failure, or other issues. In that case, the secondary provider steps in, ensuring that DNS queries are resolved and your website or service remains online, keeping your business running smoothly.
The benefits of secondary DNS.
DNS is responsible for translating domain names, which are easy for humans to read and remember, into IP addresses that computers use to communicate. DNS plays a crucial role in enabling access to websites and online services. However, any disruption to DNS services can cause downtime, rendering these resources inaccessible. When DNS services fail, the impact is immediate and widespread, resulting in downtime that cuts off access and isolates critical resources. Adding a secondary DNS provider to your environment can provide the following benefits:
- Increased reliability and uptime: Secondary DNS providers offer redundancy. Suppose the primary DNS provider experiences an outage due to a cyber attack, hardware failure, or other issues. In that case, the secondary provider ensures that DNS queries are resolved, keeping the website or service online.
- Distributed attack surface: With the prevalence of DNS attacks, as highlighted by the 2023 IDC Threat Report, which noted that 90% of organizations suffered from such incidents, having DNS requests handled by multiple providers dilutes the impact of attacks targeted at a single provider.
- Enhanced performance: Secondary DNS can also improve load times and global accessibility by leveraging the geographical distribution of multiple providers, ensuring users are directed to the nearest or most efficient server.
- Eliminate cost of downtime: Considering the significant costs associated with DNS attacks—averaging $1.1 million per incident in direct financial terms, not to mention the indirect costs related to brand damage, customer trust erosion, and potential regulatory fines—the investment in a secondary DNS provider is both prudent and cost-effective.
- Technical and business continuity: From a technical standpoint, adopting a secondary DNS strategy aligns with best practices for disaster recovery and business continuity planning. It ensures that DNS failures do not lead to catastrophic service interruptions, maintaining operational continuity and safeguarding against data theft, as was the case for 29% of impacted organizations in 2023.
Real-world incidents and lessons learned.
The 2023 IDC Threat Report leaves no doubt about the devastating impact of DNS vulnerabilities. The report highlights a unique incident where billions of HTTP DDoS requests were launched against particular regions, showcasing modern cyber threats’ vast scale and complexity. This incident serves as a clear reminder of the importance of having a solid and multi-layered defense system in place, which includes the strategic implementation of secondary DNS.
To illustrate the tangible impacts of DNS disruptions and cyber attacks, let’s examine specific examples highlighting the importance of secondary DNS providers in light of downtime metrics and incidents in 2023.
DNS attack on prominent services.
In a notable incident, an online platform that served as a cornerstone for e-commerce transactions experienced extensive downtime due to a sophisticated DNS attack. This disruption led to significant financial losses for the platform, its global users, and businesses that relied on its services. This attack highlighted the vulnerability of relying on a single DNS provider, where the failure to resolve DNS requests could render the service inaccessible.
DDoS-induced downtime in financial services.
One of the leading online banking services reported a DDoS attack that temporarily overwhelmed its DNS infrastructure, causing intermittent access issues for customers attempting to conduct online transactions. This incident, which took place during a high-traffic period, resulted in a loss of customer confidence and prompted an urgent reassessment of the institution’s DNS management strategy, highlighting the critical need for redundancy.
Global media outage due to DNS configuration errors.
A major media outlet recently suffered a significant outage due to a mistake in its DNS setup. No malicious intent caused this error, but it resulted in hours of downtime, affecting millions of users worldwide. This incident serves as a reminder that even unintentional disruptions in DNS can have far-reaching consequences. Therefore, implementing secondary DNS configurations as a fail-safe mechanism is critically important.
The events of 2023 clearly indicate the numerous risks associated with DNS-related disruptions. These risks can range from cyber attacks to unintentional configuration errors. This emphasizes the crucial role that DNS plays in safeguarding the security and availability of online services. Disruptions to DNS can have far-reaching consequences on the continuity of operations, financial stability, and user confidence.
To ensure service resilience, organizations need to adopt secondary DNS providers. This strategy offers a robust mechanism to distribute DNS queries across diverse providers. By doing so, organizations can mitigate the risk of a single point of failure, improve their defense against DDoS attacks, and enhance overall service reliability.
It is evident from these incidents that investing in secondary DNS services is not just a precautionary measure but a necessary investment in the security and reliability of digital infrastructure. As cyber threats evolve, the strategic importance of DNS redundancy and security cannot be overstated. Therefore, organizations must prioritize this aspect of their digital resilience planning.
Considering alternative DNS strategies.
The use of secondary DNS providers is a proven method of enhancing digital resilience. However, other DNS configurations can also help meet your organization’s resilience goals. One such alternative is the dual primary network setup, where two networks can each act as your primary DNS provider.
While employing a secondary DNS provider is a commendable strategy, it is essential to thoroughly evaluate all DNS management options, including innovative network configurations like dual primary setups. This comprehensive evaluation ensures that the chosen solution aligns precisely with your organization’s unique requirements and resilience objectives.
Vercara’s UltraDNS2 stands out among the modern and innovative DNS solutions, representing the next generation of DNS technology. It offers unique and advanced security, reliability, and performance features. The UltraDNS2 network was specifically designed to meet the challenging requirements of today’s digital landscape, providing organizations with an intriguing option to strengthen their digital resilience against DNS-related disruptions and attacks.
