The PDNS service has been successfully rolled out by RM across the HFL name servers. The service went live on January 10th after a phased roll out during the new year.
Here is some further information on PDNS:
What is PDNS:
PDNS stands for Protective Domain Name System, a security system designed to help keep you safe when browsing the internet. It is a way to block access to known malicious or suspicious online destinations such as websites known to host malware, ransomware, viruses, and other cyber security threats.
To connect to a website or other internet resource, your device sends a request to a DNS service to convert the website’s name (such as rm.com) into its IP address, a set of numbers that lets your device know where to find that website. The DNS system is like a foreign language dictionary that translates from one to the other.
Protective DNS steps in during this process to check if the requested site is safe or may lead to dangerous or malicious content like a phishing site or malware. If the PDNS service detects that the website could be harmful, it blocks the connection and prevents your device from reaching the site. Other traffic passes through to its destination as normal.
What does this mean for HFL Customers:
If a school is already using the HFL DNS servers, the service has already been enabled automatically. If a site is using an alternate DNS service such as 8.8.8.8 they should switch over to the correct HFL DNS.
Can I use PDNS and Transparent filtering, will our filtering service interfere with PDNS?
PDNS will apply regardless of whether a school is using transparent filtering or has its browsers configured to use a proxy.
I would like to allow part of a website blocked by PDNS, but keep the rest of the site blocked, can I set this up?
PDNS operates at the host / domain name level so it can only block entire websites.
What does an end user encounter if PDNS kicks in and does it’s protective “thing”.
If a website is blocked by PDNS the user will see a block page. The message the user will see, will clearly state that the page has been blocked by the PDNS service. Note that we cannot change the text on this page to remove the “Please contact your local Network Administrator …” section.
This site has been blocked incorrectly what do I do?
If a user believes that a website has been blocked in error, then they should contact HFL for support.