One of the main features of DNSWatch’s security is the blackholing of domains. Our team is constantly growing and shrinking the list of malicious domains and we also work with several open source feeds to add thousands more of these malicious domains to keep you fully you protected. We also provide the ability to manually blackhole a domain off your network. Let’s explore how to do this.
You can learn using our video here, or the written instructions below.
Let’s start at the Dashboard. As you will see on the left hand side of the Dashboard screen, DNSWatch lets you know how many domains you currently have blackholed and whitelisted. But what if you wanted to look through these 39 thousand to find a specific domain? You can simply search through them. You can click on the “Search Blackholed Domains” button to your right, but we are going to go a different route for now so we can explore more of the blackholing features.
Navigate to the top left hand side of the screen and click on Domains then on Blackholed. Here is the beginning of the list of thousands of blackholed domains. You can search through them by domain name in the top right, or filter your search even more by who blackholed a domain.
If you have a domain you want blocked off your network, click on the Blackhole New Domain at the bottom of the page. Simply enter in the domain and then click Save. Note you can go back at anytime and delete the black hole if need be.
Let's look at Whitelisted domains by going back up to Domains at the top left hand side of the page and clicking Whitelisted. You may not have anything here yet, but whitelisting a domain will make sure that that specific domain will never be blackholed. We highly recommend whitelisting domains for services your business depends on. Fortunately, most popular reputable business services are already whitelisting in DNSWatch. In order to minimize any disruption to your business, we recommend whitelisting services you depend on. For example, if you depend on Microsoft’s Office 365 services, it’s best to whitelist microsoftonline.com.
Lastly, if you wish to look at the intelligence feeds that include thousands of domains, go back up to Domains and then click Feeds to view the various lists. At anytime, you can go into your settings, and then Open-Source Integrations settings to disable any of these feeds, however we recommend that you keep them enabled for your protection.