SafeDNS

SafeDNS is a better alternative to Cisco Umbrella

Kommentare: We can easily have end users maintain the content filtering if needed due to the simpler interface.

Vorteile:

Very easy to install and integrate. The service allowed for more flexible options - such as a longer whitelist of websites - as well as less complicated than Cisco Umbrella.

Nachteile:

The ability to disable the content filtering for maintenance or troubleshooting had been an issue, but an update corrected it.

There are lots of DNS based security products out there

Vorteile:

Safedns does a great job of making DNS based administration quick and easy. Safedns also does a great job of allowing administrators to define a list of allowed sites and deny everything else. Some of the big players in this space surprisingly don't have this functionality.

Nachteile:

I didn't care for the SafeDNS agent software. We tried it on a few systems and decided to apply at the network level for filtered vlans.

Constant issues

Vorteile:

product worked perfectly for a year, now constant issues every week we have 2-3 outages and support has not stated anything other than to let them know if it happens again, am under huge pressure from division managers to fix once and for all, unfortunately, safedns still cannot find the issue so I am now shopping for other providers :(

Nachteile:

product no longer works , support seems to not care about fixing at all

Quality DNS software at a Reasonable Price

Kommentare: Very satisfying - set and forget - until a user says why is this site blocked?

Vorteile:

Great support during set up and use by our company. Very helpful when fixing those settings which I didn't read up on in the guide - had a "man" look.

Nachteile:

Not a "known" elite brand but I feel this to be a good thing. Not expert in all things IT but expert in this field.

Great way to improve the internet safety at home.

Kommentare: I have been very happy with SafeDNS. It has significantly improved the network safety and it requires relatively little maintenance. I don't need to require access to every device. In addition it is very easy to manage when needed.

Vorteile:

I needed a simple and affective way to manage our home network and filter out the trash from all the good that is on the internet. I work in the IT industry and so I explored a number of options including locally installed software like Qustodio, NetNanny and many others. The issue with all of the locally installed software was the constant maintenance and performance issues. They were also too intrusive. I knew about DNS options and tried OpenDNS. This worked but it had poor management options and no ability to schedule. The ability to schedule was a huge issue for me. With SafeDNS I can schedule between School/Work vs Free time automatically. I setup SafeDNS on the router so the entire house is covered automatically. All mobile and physically connected devices. They have an app you can install but I don't use that. I use SafeDNS on a router with DD-WRT installed. You need to ensure that you have the router block or redirect port 53 requests to ensure that network clients don't bypass the SafeDNS server entries. SafeDNS is not a perfect solution but it has made our network much safer without compromising or slowing down the workstations. I initially used their web categories which were pretty good. SafeDNS staff were very responsive whenever I asked for corrections to the categories. At the moment I am exploring the use of a WhiteList only. This has been very affective in really focusing our internet usage.

Nachteile:

DNS blocking is not fool proof. At the same time it is relatively easy and economical to implement and the problem cases can be dealt with on an individual basis. Some users have figured out that they can use TOR to get around DNS blocking, I am currently exploring router updates to prevent that. Use of a VPN will also bypass overly permissive DNS blocking. That is one reason why I switched to using a whitelist. A thought for SafeDNS. Consider allowing categories to be used as a whitelist instead of a blacklist. e.g. Rather then allowing everything except that which is blocked... Instead, block everything (including the unknown/uncategorized) except those categories that are known to be good.