Nominet, a well-known technology vendor in the United Kingdom that has been operating the .UK Top Level Domain for the past two decades. is now coming to the U.S., with new commercial technology to help organizations and internet providers detect and block DNS threats.
DNS (Domain Name System) is the technology that connects IP addresses to common domain names (like eWEEK.com, for example). As the operator of one of the world’s largest domain registries, Nominet has developed insight into DNS threats and what needs to be done to stop them. That insight is reflected in Nominet’s NTX DNS Threat Protection technology, which was announced on Feb. 28 and will be further detailed at the upcoming RSA Conference in San Francisco from March 4-8.
“The .UK domain is one of the safest namespaces in the world, by leveraging what has now become the Nominet NTX product,” Russell Haworth, CEO of Nominet, told eWEEK. “We built up a capability to not just keep our own network safe and secure but actually keep other networks safe and secure.”
Haworth said that NTX has been “battle tested” in live deployment by Nominet for years, and it’s now time to launch a commercially available service. The NTX service launch is part of a larger business pivot for Nominet that was first disclosed in November 2018, with the launch of the company’s Cyber-security division, with the focus of providing threat monitoring, detection, prevention and analytics services.
NTX Secure and Protect
The NTX platform has two core offerings with NTX Protect providing analysis capabilities for enterprise to detect and block threats and the NTX Secure offering providing a fully managed service for the detection and blocking of threats. Stuart Reed, VP of Products and Nominet explained that NTX essentially has a probe that looks at the DNS traffic
“So it’s not it’s not interrupting, it’s not creating any downtime in the network, it’s just tapping into and monitoring what’s going on from a DNS traffic perspective and it’s using that analysis of the traffic to create visibility and also security along the network,” Reed told eWEEK.
Reed said that NTX layers in threat intelligence on top of the DNS visibility to help identify malicious activity. He added that the core technology is all based on Nominet’s patented algorithms that look for characteristics within DNS that indicate malicious activity.
From a remediation perspective, Reed said that NTX can integrate with existing technology that an enterprise might already have, including SIEM (Security Information and Event Manager) systems. Reed said that NTX output can be send to a SIEM for further correlation and contextual analysis. NTX also can help organization to block threats via the system’s active DNS management capability.
What’s Next?
Beyond the NTX launch Haworth said that Nominet sees a big opportunity to help secure Internet of Things (IoT) devices and the company is currently working on initiatives in that space. Haworth emphasized that Nominet overall is entering the cyber-security market to grow technology for the long term.
“Fundamentally we believe that cyber-security and keeping the internet safe is a core value of Nominet,” Haworth said.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.