2025 DNS Threat Intelligence Reveals a Rise of Industrialized, Staged Attacks in 2025

The 2025 DNS Threat Intelligence findings show that staged attacks are no longer isolated tactics but part of a broader industrialized operating model. Adversaries have moved away from single, visible attack launches toward large-scale preparation strategies. Rather than relying on on-demand execution, attackers assemble extensive domain infrastructure in advance, leave most of it inactive for long periods, and activate only a limited subset at carefully chosen moments to evade traditional, reactive defenses.

DNS analytics confirm how pervasive and structured this approach has become. Malicious activity is distributed across multiple threat categories rather than concentrated in a single technique. Phishing represents 30% of matched malicious DNS traffic, followed by suspicious domains (23%), which indicate activity not yet fully confirmed as malicious. Malware-related domains account for 11% of detections in DNS data, reflecting infrastructure used to host or distribute malicious software. Newly Registered Domains (11%) and Newly Observed Domains (8%) together form a significant portion of activity, particularly during the early stages of phishing campaigns, underscoring the continuous creation of fresh infrastructure.

Although DGA-related activity represents a smaller overall share, it remains consistently present throughout the year. This persistence reflects controlled infrastructure generation rather than high-volume execution. Large numbers of algorithmically generated domains are prepared in advance, while only a small subset is ever activated.

Across phishing, malware, and DGA-driven operations, DNS analysis throughout 2025 reveals a consistent operational pattern: infrastructure is built early, held dormant, and activated selectively. Centralized backend systems and short-lived communication windows allow campaigns to scale rapidly while limiting exposure. 

Together, these patterns demonstrate that staging is not an isolated tactic but the dominant attack model observed throughout the year, reinforcing DNS as a critical layer for understanding how modern cyber threats are structured and coordinated.

DGA as the Preparation Layer for Modern Malware

Domain Generation Algorithms (DGA) have evolved into a core component of modern attack preparation. By algorithmically generating vast numbers of potential domains, attackers create large command-and-control reserves that can be selectively activated and rapidly rotated. 

The majority of these domains are never used. Instead, they form dormant pools that provide resilience and operational flexibility.

In 2025, high volumes of algorithmically generated domain queries were observed every month in DNS data, with infected devices steadily increasing over time before stabilizing at higher levels, as shown on the graph below. 

Most of these domains never become operational. Rather than indicating failed campaigns, this pattern reflects deliberate preparation, where infrastructure is generated in advance and held in reserve until needed.

When activation occurs, it appears as sharp, isolated spikes of command-and-control activity rather than sustained communication, as shown in the graph below.

Domains are opened briefly for coordination, then quickly rotated or abandoned. This tightly controlled activation minimizes detection exposure while preserving operational flexibility. 

The BaitHook (EIP-443) campaign illustrates how this activation model operates at scale. During 2025, BaitHook generated approximately 580,000 potential command-and-control domains. However, only a small fraction were ever activated. The overwhelming majority remained dormant, reinforcing how DGA infrastructure is designed primarily for preparation and selective use rather than continuous operation.

As shown in the graph below, BaitHook-infected devices generating DGA queries increased steadily throughout 2025 before stabilizing at higher levels.

The BaitHook patterns highlight a broader shift: DGAs are no longer simply an evasion technique. They are a core preparation mechanism that allows attackers to build infrastructure at scale, hold it dormant, and activate only what is needed. This further reinforces the role of DNS security in detecting attack preparation early.

Malware Campaigns Built for Delayed Activation

Malware-related DNS activity in 2025 persisted throughout the year, with a clear escalation toward the end of the year, as shown in the graph below.

Modern malware campaigns increasingly separate staging from execution. In 2025, several infostealer operations demonstrated long periods of dormant domain activity followed by tightly coordinated activation windows.

Campaigns such as EconoMimics and variants related to ViperSoftX illustrated this model clearly. As shown in the graph above, DNS telemetry reveals several distinct operational peaks during the year. 

These peaks indicate periods when malware infrastructure becomes actively used, following quieter phases where activity remains comparatively low. This delay reflects deliberate staging rather than slow execution.

Some of these malware families leveraged DNS TXT record lookups to deliver small, encoded PowerShell fragments that executed entirely in memory. 

Because the payloads were fileless, traditional endpoint defenses had limited visibility. DNS behavior became the primary signal of malicious activity.

Malware-related DNS activity also showed strong structural concentration. A minority of infected devices generated a disproportionately large share of DNS queries, and rotating domains repeatedly resolved to the same backend infrastructure. These characteristics were consistently observed across multiple infostealer families, reinforcing the role of DNS as the most reliable indicator of staged malware activity.

Phishing as a Visible Outcome of Staged Infrastructure

While phishing is often the most visible element of a cyberattack, it represents the activation phase of staged infrastructure rather than the full story. In 2025, phishing accounts for approximately 30% of all malicious domains, a proportion that remains stable throughout the year, establishing phishing as a structural and persistent component of the threat landscape.

Phishing activity typically combines a continuous operational presence with opportunity-driven campaigns, as attackers time their strikes to align with revenue cycles and consumer behavior. 

As illustrated in the graph below, several notable peaks align with identifiable campaigns, including Bet365-themed phishing during major sports events early in the year, Netflix impersonation campaigns in the spring, Telegram impersonation spikes in late summer, and increased eBay and Amazon impersonation during the year-end shopping season.

DNS analytics show that phishing domains often become operational shortly after first appearing in DNS traffic, indicating rapid activation of infrastructure that was prepared in advance. What appears as a sudden phishing spike is often only the visible surface of earlier staging activity.

Newly Observed Domains Preceding Active Campaigns

Newly observed domains play a central role in attack staging. DNS analytics consistently show increases in new domain activity preceding both malware and phishing campaigns. These domains often appear quietly, generate limited traffic, and remain dormant before being activated briefly. 

The graph below visually reinforces these trends using normalized, log-scale values, enabling a direct comparison between phishing activity and newly observed domain (NOD) volumes across months.

While phishing appears as distinct, time-bound spikes, NOD activity is more sustained and consistently precedes those peaks. This gap highlights the preparation phase of staged attacks, where infrastructure is created and positioned well before campaigns become visible.

This pattern was visible in sector-focused campaigns such as those targeting bet365, where spikes in newly observed domains preceded coordinated phishing activity, as seen in the graph below. Rather than appearing spontaneously, these campaigns were supported by infrastructure that had been prepared in advance and activated at precisely timed moments.

Tracking newly observed domains allows defenders to identify emerging infrastructure before it is weaponized. 

In an environment where attackers rely on fresh, short-lived assets to evade reputation-based controls, this early visibility provides a meaningful advantage. 

DNS Threat Intelligence connects these early signals to downstream activity, revealing how preparation phases translate into active campaigns.

DNS Analytics as an Early Indicator Across the Attack Lifecycle

Across DGA, malware, and phishing activity, DNS consistently exposes signals that other security layers miss. Infrastructure preparation, activation timing, reuse, and teardown all leave traces in DNS traffic. 

When analyzed at scale, these signals reveal the full lifecycle of modern attacks, from planning and staging to execution and abandonment.

Unlike endpoint or network controls that focus on exploitation, DNS Threat Intelligence surfaces attacker behavior at its earliest stages. This is what makes DNS security uniquely valuable in the era of staged attacks. It provides visibility into intent and preparation, not just impact.

From Insight to Action with 2025 DNS Threat Intelligence

The scale and speed of modern attacks make manual analysis impossible. 2025 DNS Threat Intelligence became essential for identifying large-scale staged attacks and uncovering preparation activity hidden in DNS traffic. 

EfficientIP’s DNS Threat Intelligence platform plays a critical role, enabling security teams to see how malicious infrastructure is generated, staged, activated, and reused over time. 

The platform is made of a hybrid architecture that combines real-time DNS inspection at the network edge with large-scale cloud intelligence, correlating DNS anomalies with client and domain behavioral patterns, and with infrastructure analysis that evaluates the broader technical ecosystem surrounding a domain. 

Processing more than 150 billion DNS transactions and analyzing over 500,000 newly observed domains daily, it provides both immediate detection and long-term context to identify coordinated, staged campaigns at scale.

A unified detection pipeline integrates multiple AI models. Patented Tuple Clustering identifies DGA malware, Natural Language Processing (NLP) detects phishing and brand impersonation, computer vision flags deceptive sites, and behavioral analytics uncover tunneling and dormant infrastructure.

To improve detection accuracy and investigative depth, DNS signals are enriched with contextual data such as domain age, hosting providers, ASN ownership, SSL certificate metadata, device identity, and Newly Observed Domain intelligence. The platform analyzes approximately 500,000 new domains daily, many unseen in other threat intelligence feeds, enabling earlier identification of emerging phishing, DGA, and malware infrastructure.

To operationalize this intelligence, the platform aggregates its findings into a continuously updated DNS threat intelligence feed called DNS Threat Pulse (DTP), which delivers structured domain intelligence ready for enforcement by granular dns filtering policies.

Together, these capabilities move DNS Threat Intelligence from passive visibility to active defense. 

Instead of responding once campaigns are underway, organizations gain the ability to anticipate attacks during the preparation phase, when disrupting infrastructure has the greatest impact.

A 2026 Look Ahead

2025 DNS Threat Intelligence points to a clear shift in how attacks will unfold in 2026. As adversaries increasingly stage infrastructure well in advance and activate it selectively, preparation has become the defining phase of modern attacks. 

DNS Threat Intelligence offers the earliest visibility into this preparation, enabling organizations to anticipate how threats will evolve and reduce exposure before campaigns activate. Reading the full report provides deeper insight into these trends and helps organizations stay prepared for 2026.

As enterprise networks evolve toward hybrid multicloud, AI workloads, software-defined fabrics, and zero-trust security models, operational complexity continues to rise. Many organizations struggle to maintain accurate, actionable network data that can support automation at scale. This blog explains how Cisco and EfficientIP integrations address these challenges by helping network teams build and maintain a reliable Network Source of Truth (NSoT), synchronizing network and security platforms, and enabling consistent automation across campus, data center, SD-WAN, and security domains.

The Modern IT Challenge – Complexity, Visibility, and Silos

Enterprise networks now span multiple operational domains: campus fabrics, data centers, hybrid multicloud deployments, and increasingly AI-driven application infrastructures. These environments introduce continuous changes and evolutions, requiring synchronization between networking and security teams.

This reality exposes three recurring operational challenges.

Lack of unified visibility remains a fundamental issue. Traditional monitoring and configuration tools are often scoped to a single domain, such as on-premises infrastructure or cloud networking, making it difficult to obtain a unified view across on-premises infrastructures, public clouds, and edge environments.

Data silos further complicate operations. SD-WAN platforms, SDN controllers, legacy networks, and security systems frequently maintain independent data sets. Without a shared reference, teams cannot reliably correlate IP addresses, devices, identities, and policies, leaving organizations exposed to operational, security, and compliance risks.

Operational inefficiencies are the natural consequence. When networking platforms and IP Address Management (IPAM) systems are not synchronized, teams rely on manual updates and ad-hoc scripts. This increases the risk of configuration drift, IP conflicts, and security gaps.  

To overcome these challenges, organizations need a Network Source of Truth (NSoT), a centralized, authoritative repository that models and maintains the intended state of the network. However, an NSoT is only effective if it remains continuously synchronized with the live network.

Why Cisco and EfficientIP Integrations Are Needed

Cisco provides one of the most comprehensive networking and security ecosystems available today. Platforms such as Meraki, Catalyst Center, ACI, and ISE cover network connectivity, management, and policy enforcement across nearly every part of the enterprise network.

However, these platforms depend on accurate and consistent IP-level data to operate correctly.

EfficientIP’s SOLIDserver DDI platform (DNS, DHCP, and IPAM) provides this foundation. It centrally manages IP address plans, DNS zones, DHCP scopes, and associated metadata, acting as the IP Golden Record. In addition, it aggregates related network data such as VLANs, VRFs, applications, devices, and other connected objects. This DDI-enabled foundation serves as a Network Source of Truth (NSoT). Combined with its extensive APIs, it forms a Network Automation Hub, delivering a control plane for automation rather than merely operating as a passive database. 

Through Cisco and EfficientIP Integrations, this enriched DDI data becomes the shared reference point between network and security systems. Aligning IP-related data across tools bridges the gap between NetOps and SecOps, ensuring that asset discovery, provisioning, configuration, and policy enforcement all rely on the same authoritative dataset.

Cisco and EfficientIP Integrations for Networking – Building and Maintaining a Network Source of Truth

Establishing a trustworthy NSoT requires automated discovery and synchronization across all network fabrics. EfficientIP provides dedicated integrations for Cisco’s primary networking domains.

1. Cisco Meraki (Hybrid Cloud / SD-WAN)

Cisco Meraki environments are highly dynamic, particularly in distributed and cloud-managed deployments. EfficientIP integrates with Meraki using the Cloud Observer plugin, which automatically discovers and tracks Meraki resources such as wireless access points, switches, IoT devices, and SD-WAN appliances.

Discovered data is aggregated into a single view and reconciled with IPAM records. When discrepancies are detected, such as missing or inconsistent IP assignments, they are flagged for remediation. This continuous reconciliation keeps the NSoT accurate and supports downstream automation tasks, including security policy alignment and lifecycle management.

2. Cisco Catalyst Center (Campus / Branch)

In campus and branch environments, Cisco Catalyst Center plays a central role in fabric provisioning. The integration with EfficientIP uses a uni-directional API model in which Catalyst Center requests IP subnets directly from IPAM during network creation.

This approach eliminates manual subnet planning and prevents IP conflicts. DNS and DHCP services are automatically created as part of the provisioning workflow, enabling true zero-touch deployment. Network teams no longer need to manage IP plans manually during fabric expansion, while maintaining full consistency with enterprise addressing policies.

3. Cisco ACI (Data Center SDN)

In the data center, EfficientIP can integrate with Cisco ACI by communicating directly with the APIC API. This allows SOLIDserver to collect information such as tenants, applications, and End Point Groups (EPGs), the physical interface on the leaf switch to which each server is connected; and the MAC and IP addresses of deployed resources, correlating all of this with IPAM data.

The integration maps discovered objects if present in IPAM records, providing full visibility into the overlay network. This consolidated view ensures that the IP Golden Record accurately reflects the complete connectivity chain, from application and tenant down to the physical switch port, supporting troubleshooting, compliance, and automation use cases.

NetSecOps Integration: Bridging Security and Network Operations

EfficientIP SOLIDserver DDI integrates with Cisco ISE to automate the synchronization of MAC addresses, ensuring that security policies remain consistent and up-to-date. When IP addresses are created or deleted in IPAM, the corresponding MAC addresses are automatically updated in ISE, while Identity Groups are replicated to an IPAM custom database to maintain alignment across systems. The integration also supports accurate user and device tracking throughout the network.

By automating these processes, organizations increase operational efficiency, strengthen their security posture through consistent policy enforcement, and support enterprise-wide compliance with error-free, standardized security management. This seamless connection between SOLIDserver and ISE helps make the Network Source of Truth actionable for both operations and security teams.

Security Integration: Extending the Defense Perimeter 

To complement the network and NetSecOps integrations, EfficientIP DNS Guardian and Cisco Umbrella DNS (or Cisco Secure Access – DNS Defense) provide visibility and protection both inside and outside the network perimeter.

DNS Guardian delivers on-premise, behavioral threat detection by analyzing DNS transaction patterns. It identifies advanced threats such as tunneling, slow data exfiltration, and zero-day exploits that may bypass traditional perimeter defenses.

Cisco Umbrella DNS adds cloud-based threat intelligence, blocking access to known malicious domains before connections are established. Together, these solutions protect users wherever they are, extending the organization’s defense perimeter beyond the traditional network.

Enterprise networks can no longer operate as disconnected, static infrastructures. They must function as adaptive, automated systems built on reliable data. By leveraging Cisco and EfficientIP integrations, organizations transform DDI from a passive record-keeping function into an NSoT, unlocking active automation and acting as a security control plane. 

These integrations ensure that the Network Source of Truth remains accurate and actionable across networking and security domains. From Meraki discovery and Catalyst Center provisioning to ACI visibility and ISE policy enforcement, Cisco and EfficientIP provide a practical framework for streamlining operations while reducing risk.

As network environments grow more complex, many organizations are finding that their network data foundations cannot support advanced automation. New research from Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) shows that although most teams have a Network Source of Truth (NSoT), few consider it effective. This blog explores why NSoT for NetDevOps matters, how it is used, and how to overcome the factors limiting its success. 

NSoT at a Crossroads: Adoption and Maturity

Network automation is now a top strategic priority, yet many organizations struggle to scale it. As IT organizations mature their approaches to network automation, the need for a Network Source of Truth (NSoT) has emerged. 

According to EMA, while 80% of network automation teams have a Network Source of Truth (NSoT), only 20% consider it to be completely effective, putting network teams at a crossroads in how they adopt and evolve NSoT solutions.

This disconnect between adoption and operational impact was one of the findings in EMA’s new report, The Network Source of Truth: How Engineering Teams Establish and Use These Critical Tools.

The report examines how teams build and use NSoTs as networks expand across data centers, cloud platforms, and hybrid multicloud environments. Many organizations still rely on spreadsheets, outdated documentation, and disconnected tools – but these approaches fail at scale.

To support consistent automation, teams need a centralized, authoritative repository of operations data that network automation tools can reference programmatically when interacting with and modifying the network. However, as outlined in the EMA report, the value of an NSoT extends beyond automation with NSoT for NetDevOps.

Defining the “Truth”: What Is a Network Source of Truth?

One of the fundamental issues around NSoT is that many still misunderstand exactly what it means. There is a tendency to believe it’s a case of documenting what is currently on the network, but a true Network Source of Truth goes beyond this to focus on intent.

It defines how the network should operate and becomes the standard against which changes and outcomes are measured.

As one network automation architect interviewed anonymously by EMA explains, “A Network Source of Truth is a place where you model your production network the way you intend it to work.”

This makes the NSoT the authoritative reference for engineers, automation tools, and operational processes.

The report set out three core data components required to establish a reliable NSoT: inventory, IP address management, topology and connectivity. Inventory must include details such as the make, model, serial numbers or lifecycle information, while IPAM covers IP allocations, subnets and public/private space. Finally, topology encompasses all physical and logical connections.

Together, these create a structured model of network intent that supports daily operations, network automation, and integration across the wider ecosystem.

The “Why”: Drivers Behind NSoT Adoption

There are multiple factors behind the growing strategic need for a reliable NSoT. A long-standing lack of good network documentation is one issue driving adoption. Network information is often scattered across Excel files, CMDBs, IPAM systems, DNS platforms, DDI tools, and proprietary vendor software. Each source may be partially accurate. Storing the information separately creates fragmentation and inconsistency that slows operations and increases risk.

EMA’s research shows engineers frequently waste time searching for data, reconciling conflicting records, and updating multiple systems after changes. In outages or audits, poor documentation can delay resolution. A centralized NSoT addresses this by providing a single, trusted reference.

NSoT is also essential for scalable automation. As teams move beyond scripts to workflows affecting thousands of devices, automation depends on accurate, structured data.

NSoT is equally fundamental for successfully establishing NetDevOps practices. This is a confluence of Network, Development, and IT Operations which aims to drive greater efficiency, automation and collaboration.

A network engineer at a Fortune 500 financial services company elaborated: “The NetDevOps group’s whole philosophy is treating the network more like applications. Instead of doing this engineering task and that engineering task, NetDevOps engineers are more interested in analyzing workflows and then codifying those workflows. ‘How can I take this series of tasks that you’re doing and make that more into an application that you can execute?”

NSoT for NetDevOps: Key Use Cases Beyond Data Storage

In order to properly codify network infrastructure into applications and drive consistent automation, network data as available in an NSoT is the foundation.

EMA’s research shows that a Network Source of Truth is at its most valuable when embedded into operational workflows, and EMA delves into some of the most powerful use cases of NSoT for NetDevOps.

Provisioning and deployment are common starting points. With intent data centralized, teams can support Day 0 operations such as onboarding devices or deploying sites. NSoTs can help generate configurations, validate IP plans, and enforce standards. In mature environments, this data feeds automation tools to support Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) across on-premises and cloud infrastructure.

Change and configuration management is another core use case. Because the NSoT contains the data needed to generate configurations, teams use it to plan and manage changes. EMA found growing interest in branching, which allows engineers to model and test changes without affecting the authoritative dataset. Changes can be reviewed and merged once approved. 

NSoTs also support network validation, compliance management, and audits. By defining the intended state, teams can compare it to the actual network state, detect configuration drift, and validate that planned changes were successful. It also enables them to enforce compliance and generate audit reports more efficiently.

Finally, NSoTs accelerate troubleshooting. Engineers can quickly understand how the network should look, compare intent to reality, and identify root causes. Integrated with observability and automation, the NSoT enables faster, controlled remediation.

The Hurdles: Why Adoption is Long and Painful

Despite clear benefits, EMA found that building an effective NSoT is difficult, as highlighted by the fact that only 20% believe their NSoT implementations to be fully successful.

One of the biggest challenges is populating it with accurate data. Information is often missing, outdated, or scattered across informal sources. Finding, cleaning up, and importing data is painful.

Some data is offline, requiring manual verification of cabling or physical connections. This makes the initial population a long process rather than a quick deployment.

Cultural resistance also undermines success. An NSoT only works if engineers treat it as authoritative. EMA found that bypassing the NSoT or failing to update it erodes trust and makes the data unreliable.

This is especially true further up the leadership ladder, and securing management buy-in is another barrier. Failure to justify a dedicated NSoT budget is leading many teams to rely on open-source or homegrown tools, creating technical debt that demands scarce and costly networking and software development expertise. 

EMA’s research suggests that many organizations may now be at an inflection point, considering how commercial NSoT solutions could help accelerate adoption and address some of these challenges.

What to Look for in an NSoT for NetDevOps

EMA’s findings show that long-term success depends on NSoT capabilities. A flexible, extensible data model is essential to enable teams to model inventory, IP addressing, routing, security policies, and new technologies as networks evolve.

Alongside this, an API-first design is equally critical. Network teams rely on APIs to integrate the NSoT with automation tools, observability platforms, and service management systems across the ecosystem. 

Support for event-driven operations is essential for understanding what is happening on the network and feeding timely data into the NSoT. . As one network automation engineer noted, a source of truth is ineffective without web hook or discovery capabilities. This allows networking teams to orchestrate operations through the NSoT.

Finally, some teams are exploring AI with their NSoT to make it more accessible for non-experts via virtual assistants, while also using it as a foundation for AI-driven NetOps by enabling proactive and predictive insights.

EMA’s research shows that a Network Source of Truth is essential for modern networking operations, enabling scalable network automation and NetDevOps. When treated as an authoritative model of intent, NSoT for NetDevOps becomes a control plane that streamlines operations, improves operational efficiency, and reduces risk. 

Even with multiple security tools in place, a surprising amount of suspicious DNS activity goes unnoticed. A DNS Risk Assessment exposes what lurks underneath: malicious domains, tunneling behavior, certificate issues, misconfigurations, shadow IT, risky applications, and other hidden risks buried deep within DNS traffic. The deepest risks in your network rarely announce themselves – but DNS always leaves a trail.

A DNS Risk Assessment That Changed Everything

During a recent DNS Risk Assessment, a customer submitted just one day of DNS traffic for analysis. The report quickly surfaced several findings they hadn’t been aware of at all: DNS queries linked to phishing and malware domains, multiple certificate weaknesses — and one pattern in particular that stood out. A series of unusually long, repetitive subdomain queries appeared during off-hours, a classic early indicator of DNS tunneling. While small in volume, this type of activity is often used to test whether data can be pushed out unnoticed, and it wasn’t something the customer had ever seen before. It was a clear reminder that DNS often reveals the earliest signs of risk long before they appear anywhere else.

This customer is not alone. A 2025 Forrester Study found that 95% of organizations experienced DNS-related attacks or vulnerabilities in the past year, with phishing and malware among the most common threats observed at the DNS layer. DNS tunneling, the technique hinted at in this customer’s assessment, has been reported by 26% of organizations, suggesting that the off-hours, long-subdomain activity uncovered in this customer’s network reflects a broader attacker behavior. In response, 85% of security leaders consider regular DNS audits critical, and 91% are prioritizing stronger DNS monitoring and analysis, highlighting the growing importance of DNS Risk Assessments as a first step in understanding and reducing exposure.

How EfficientIP DNS Risk Assessment Works

One of the most valuable aspects of our DNS Risk Assessment is how simple and non-intrusive it is. The process starts with capturing real DNS traffic, typically a standard tcpdump from one of your DNS resolvers or forwarders. There is no installation, no agent, and no disruption to your production environment. Once the capture is securely uploaded, the assessment tool processes the data and generates a clear, interactive report tailored to your organization.

Behind the scenes, the analysis uses EfficientIP’s global DNS Threat Intelligence, machine learning models, statistical techniques, and passive DNS data. It correlates patterns across billions of DNS records to identify unusual behavior, suspicious domains, and signals that may indicate misconfigurations or security risks.

An EfficientIP expert then reviews the findings to ensure accuracy, highlight what matters most, and guide you through the results. This context helps validate what is normal in your environment and points directly to areas that need attention.The outcome is clear, evidence-based visibility. You see exactly what happened inside your DNS traffic, which devices and IP addresses were involved, which IOCs were triggered, where anomalies or risks may exist and the overall risk score. Because the report is structured into clear sections with explanations and visualizations, teams can easily understand the findings and prioritize the next steps.

What DNS Traffic Analysis Reveals About Your Network Behavior

DNS Traffic Analysis provides a clear view of how your network behaves by transforming raw DNS traffic into structured insights. Patterns that were previously buried inside logs suddenly become visible, and behaviors that seemed normal now raise new questions. It begins with an overview of total queries, DNS query types and the query-to-response ratio, which helps validate normal DNS operation. Response code statistics shows if most traffic returns “No Error” or if high levels of NXDOMAIN and SERVFAIL levels point to misconfigurations or unreachable services.

Latency insights identify the domains with the slowest response times and display latency peaks across the capture period. Extremely slow domains or sudden spikes can indicate dependency issues or brief network incidents.

A device analysis lists all detected endpoints and the DNS servers observed during the capture, typically your internal DNS resolvers. It includes a full table of DNS communications, showing the source and destination IP addresses for each query as well as the associated query types and response codes, making it easy to spot endpoints generating abnormal behaviour. For example, a device with thousands of NXDOMAIN responses often indicates a misconfigured application or a process repeatedly querying non-existent domains.

Domains in traffic are also grouped into categories such as Business, Electronics or Online Communities. This view shows which types of services are accessed and which devices generated those requests. 

The assessment also provides a geographic perspective by showing where the DNS servers responding to your queries are located and where the resolved server IP addresses sit globally. These patterns feed into exposure and risk scoring based on widely used country-level risk indicators.

Together, these insights provide a complete understanding of how your environment uses DNS and create a strong foundation for examining the hidden security risks that may be present in the traffic itself.

Exposing Hidden Security Threats in DNS Traffic

Once the assessment has outlined how DNS is used across your environment, it shifts to its most important purpose of exposing hidden DNS security threats. What looked like ordinary DNS activity begins to reveal deeper signals that other tools often miss.The assessment highlights domains classified as malicious or suspicious by processing and curating multi-source DNS Threat Intelligence feeds using AI-driven and other analytical algorithms. Phishing sites are identified through NLP models and image-recognition techniques that analyse domain names and website visuals. Advanced analytics, including our patented tuple clustering, detect domain-generation algorithm (DGA) activity and other suspicious DNS query patterns that fall outside normal behavior.

The assessment also detects patterns that may indicate tunneling attempts. These include unusually long or repetitive subdomain structures and sequences of queries that do not match normal application behavior. Even at low volume, these early signals often reveal attempts to test whether data can move through DNS without being noticed.

Newly observed or rarely seen domains are surfaced as well. Flagging them as suspicious domains helps identify potential command-and-control callbacks, domain-generation behavior or unwanted third-party services.

This deeper analysis leverages DNS threat intelligence to expose threats already present in your DNS traffic ,and often reveals indicators long before they appear anywhere else.

Discovering Shadow IT, Applications, and Certificate Risks

Did you know that DNS traffic alone can show what people in your organisation actually use every day? Many teams are surprised by how much a DNS Risk Assessment uncovers without touching a single device.

By matching your traffic against thousands of known applications, the assessment quickly exposes unexpected tools: a second antivirus product running on only a few machines, remote-access tools like TeamViewer appearing where they should not, or old agents that were never fully removed. These findings often point to shadow IT and unnoticed software that quietly increases risk. The assessment also uncovers usage patterns, such as heavy streaming activity, that can impact network performance even if they are not direct security threats.

Certificate scanning adds another layer of visibility. Using passive DNS, the assessment identifies your domains and subdomains and checks their SSL and TLS configurations, often revealing expired certificates or outdated setups that can break services or weaken security.

All of this comes from DNS alone, offering a clear, human view of what is really happening in your environment.

Assessing Brand Risk

Google recently filed a lawsuit against a global phishing group that used fake domains to impersonate its services. Google claims the group harmed its reputation by illegally displaying its trademark on fraudulent websites and convincing users they were legitimate. This case shows how quickly a brand can be copied online and how damaging impersonation can become.

The DNS Risk Assessment helps organizations uncover similar risks before they escalate. It highlights domains that closely resemble your organization’s identity and could be used to mislead customers or employees. These insights give you early visibility into potential misuse of your brand name, helping you protect trust and prevent attackers from exploiting your online presence.

The DNS Risk Assessment Is Only the First Step

The DNS Risk Assessment concludes with an exposure score that brings all findings together into a single, clear indicator of your overall risk level. It reflects everything uncovered throughout the assessment, including hidden threats, configuration issues, suspicious domains, shadow IT, certificate weaknesses and early signs of brand impersonation. This score helps you understand your security posture at a glance and shows which areas should be prioritised first.

When teams reach this point in the report, there is usually a mix of relief and urgency. Relief because the unknown is now visible. Urgency because visibility is not the same as protection. It is often the same reaction we saw in the customer case that opened this blog: once their tunneling attempt, certificate issues and malicious domains appeared in the report, the question quickly shifted from “what is happening?” to “what do we fix first?”

The assessment provides clarity and direction, but it is only a snapshot in time. Threats evolve, behavior changes, and attackers adapt quickly. Long-term resilience comes from turning these insights into continuous DNS Security action.With EfficientIP’s 360° DNS Security solution, organizations can protect proactively, detect early, and respond quickly before small signals turn into real incidents.

The First Step Toward Stronger DNS Security

As we have seen throughout this blog, the EfficientIP DNS Risk Assessment reveals what is really happening in your DNS traffic and exposes risks that usually stay hidden. It is simple, fast, and completely non-intrusive, yet it delivers immediate clarity on where your organization is most vulnerable. With that level of visibility, the next step becomes obvious: act on the insights while they are still early and manageable.Getting started is easy and free. Just complete the form, launch your assessment and take the first step toward stronger, smarter DNS security.

EfficientIP has been recognized as a Value Leader in the 2025 EMA^TM Radar for DNS, DHCP, and IP Address Management (DDI) – the highest possible ranking. This distinguished position reflects EfficientIP’s strength in delivering innovative, scalable, and cost-efficient DDI solutions that empower enterprises to simplify, automate, and secure their networks. Read on to discover why the EMA DDI Radar is an essential guide to understanding the current DDI market landscape – and why EfficientIP stands out as a frontrunner.

EMA DDI Radar Explained

The EMA DDI Radar is an independent, data-driven benchmark for enterprises evaluating the core technologies that enable modern network communications. Focusing on DNS, DHCP, and IP Address Management (DDI), the report assesses twelve products from ten vendors, analyzing each across five key categories: Cost Advantage, Deployment and Administration, Architecture and Integration, Functionality, and Vendor Strength.

The report combines quantitative performance metrics with qualitative insights from vendor briefings and customer references to produce an authoritative view of how DDI vendors are supporting enterprises’ evolving network needs.

The Radar’s unique framework plots vendors on a visual matrix according to Product Strength (a combination of functionality and architecture) and Cost-Efficiency (a blend of cost and ease of deployment). Vendors positioned in the upper-right quadrant represent the highest-value solutions – delivering exceptional technical capability alongside strong operational efficiency. EfficientIP was ranked highly in both fields, earning it the position of Value Leader, with an overall placement above all other DDI technology vendors.

Understanding The Evolving DDI Market Landscape

DNS, DHCP, and IP address management (IPAM) are core networking services that underpin modern network communications and simplify network management. Although the DDI market is mature, it is evolving in response to emerging trends. The widespread adoption of hybrid and multi-cloud architectures has heightened the importance of these services, introducing greater complexity, particularly in IP address space and multi-vendor DNS environments. This shift is driving innovation in the DDI market and creating new requirements, including:

• Multi-vendor overlay management, scalability, and performance: innovative DDI technology needs to support and consolidate overlay management of third-party DNS and DHCP services across heterogeneous environments while scaling with growing networks and ensuring performance.
• Security features: organizations expect built-in DNS security including DNS firewall, DNSSEC, role-based access control (RBAC), and DDoS protection among others, to safeguard applications, users, and data across on-premises and cloud networks.
• Workflow automation:  IT teams increasingly expect DDI solutions to support automated workflows, especially for network and cloud asset discovery, automated IP address allocation, and DNS and DHCP configuration and deployment.
• APIs and ecosystem Integration: extensive DDI data paves the way for establishing a trusted Network Source of Truth (NSoT) which, when exposed through APIs, enables network engineering teams to seamlessly integrate their IT and cloud orchestration platforms, ITSM, and security tools for end-to-end ecosystem automation.

Why EfficientIP is Recognized as a Leader Spearheading the DDI Industry

The 2025 EMA DDI Radar positions EfficientIP as a Value Leader, the highest category of recognition possible in the report. An exceptional balance between product strength, deployment, administration, and cost-efficiency places EfficientIP in the upper-right quadrant of the Radar, positioning it as one of the most comprehensive and forward-looking DDI solutions on the market.

The in-depth evaluation highlights the strengths of the SOLIDserver DDI suite, including its unified management of DNS, DHCP, and IP Address Management, its extensive feature set like DNS security, and high scalability, supporting any deployment model across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Outstanding Results from the EMA DDI Radar

DDI Excellence Anchored in IP Address Management

EfficientIP’s fully featured IP Address Management (IPAM) functionality was rated among the best across all vendors evaluated. This capability is a foundation of DDI-enabled Network Source of Truth (NSoT) and enables complete DDI lifecycle management and real-time synchronization between IPAM, DNS, and DHCP.  This ensures consistency and eliminates configuration conflicts such as duplicate IP addresses or overlapping subnets.

The reporting and visualization capabilities built on these IPAM foundations further strengthen operational visibility. EMA notes that SOLIDserver dashboards and reports are highly customizable to the user’s priorities, enabling teams to easily monitor DNS and DHCP performance, track network health, and support network compliance efforts through proactive analysis.

Building the Network Source of Truth

EMA underscores EfficientIP’s ability to extend DDI beyond traditional IP management to serve as a true network source of truth. The Cloud Observer, NetChange, and Network Object Manager components of SOLIDserver allow customers to respectively discover, model, and visualize a wide range of network inventory data. This includes VPCs, VMs, and other devices and objects critical to network operations.

This data-rich approach supports essential use cases such as network design, troubleshooting, and automation. EMA notes that EfficientIP’s NSoT model is highly structured and flexible, enabling the addition of custom metadata to objects and ensuring data remains both accurate and actionable. Continuous reconciliation between intended configurations and real-world environments ensures the NSoT is always up to date, driving scalable network automation through a Network Automation Hub.

SOLIDserver APIs were rated Outstanding, providing 100% feature coverage and unlocking seamless end-to-end integration with third-party systems. Combined with tools such as Cloud Observer and NetChange IPLocator, these APIs extend the discovery and unified visibility capabilities that are increasingly vital across hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructures. 

Scalable Architecture and Operational Efficiency

Architectural design was another major factor behind its leadership position. EMA rated the platform Outstanding for both IPAM and DNS scalability, and for its scale-out architecture. These features enable it to support large, distributed, and high-availability deployments with ease through.

EfficientIP’s SmartArchitecture^TM templates were also praised for their ability to simplify policy-driven DNS and DHCP automation across geographically distributed networks. This combination of scalability, flexibility, and intelligent automation reduces administrative burden while maintaining performance consistency across the enterprise.

The Radar also rated maintenance and support costs as Outstanding, and deployment flexibility and timelines as Strong to Outstanding. Together, these factors contribute to one of the most competitive total cost of ownership profiles in the study.

Key Takeaways

EfficientIP’s recognition as a Value Leader in the 2025 EMA DDI Radar validates its continued innovation and strong execution. The SOLIDserver suite stands out for its powerful IPAM, scalable architecture, and comprehensive Network Source of Truth capabilities. By unifying visibility, automation, and security across hybrid and multi-cloud networks, EfficientIP delivers one of the industry’s most efficient and forward-looking DDI platforms.

The Radar makes it clear that EfficientIP is a trusted partner helping organizations achieve greater network resilience, agility, and control across every environment.

Your network assets are now everywhere—spread across on-premise data centers, private clouds, public clouds, and virtual machines. This growing complexity has made it increasingly difficult for IT teams to maintain full visibility into their environments. The result? Unmanageable asset costs, compliance gaps, security vulnerabilities, and operational inefficiencies.

Fortunately, it’s possible to regain control. Solutions such as EfficientIP’s Unified Asset Discovery give organizations a single, consolidated view of every asset across all environments. By improving visibility and data quality, Unified Asset Discovery helps optimize costs, strengthen security, streamline operations, and ensure compliance.

The Modern Reality: Fragmented Assets, Mounting Challenges

In today’s hybrid, multi-cloud world, enterprise networks are sprawling faster than most IT teams can track. Applications and workloads now run everywhere—on-premise, in virtualized environments, and across multiple cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

While this flexibility drives agility and scalability, it also introduces significant challenges. The more distributed assets become, the harder it is to know exactly what you have, where it resides, and how it’s configured. A 2025 Flexera State of IT Asset Management (ITAM) report reveals that only 43% of organizations fully understand their IT assets and their impact on business outcomes—down from 47% the previous year. That decline underscores the growing complexity of IT environments and the inadequacy of traditional tracking tools.

The Configuration Management Database (CMDB), once considered the cornerstone of IT asset management, often fails to keep pace. As Gartner points out, CMDBs are frequently “poorly maintained” and rely on static, outdated data. Without accurate, real-time information, organizations can’t make informed decisions or effectively control their infrastructure.

This lack of visibility creates cascading problems. Costs spiral out of control as teams unknowingly overprovision or leave assets idle. Compliance becomes a constant struggle when no one can say for sure which systems are in use or how they’re configured. Security risks multiply as ungoverned or “shadow IT” devices proliferate, while operational inefficiencies grow as teams spend valuable time reconciling mismatched data across disconnected systems. In short, the network is evolving faster than traditional management tools can handle.

The Foundation of Control: Comprehensive Asset Discovery

To regain visibility and control, organizations need to discover, track, and consolidate their assets everywhere—across all environments, devices, and clouds. The first step in that journey is Asset Discovery.

An effective discovery solution identifies every device, object, and application connected to the network, no matter where it lives. This process not only reveals the full extent of your network infrastructure but also exposes the hidden issues undermining performance and efficiency. For instance, it can uncover “zombie assets”—idle or forgotten resources that consume power, storage, or licensing costs without delivering business value. Repurposing or decommissioning these assets leads to better capacity planning, improved cost control, and smarter investment decisions.

Asset discovery also brings to light hidden or ungoverned applications that increase the attack surface and pose security threats. By bringing these assets into the fold, organizations reduce risk and reinforce network assurance.

Equally important, continuous discovery helps prevent configuration drift—the gradual divergence between the network’s intended and actual state. Left unchecked, configuration drift caused by human errors or shadow IT can cause degraded performance, outages, security vulnerabilities, and compliance violations. Regularly detecting and reconciling these differences ensures consistent, reliable configurations across the enterprise.

Ultimately, comprehensive discovery delivers what every IT team needs most: visibility and control across all environments.

EfficientIP’s Unified Asset Discovery: Visibility Without Borders

EfficientIP Unified Asset Discovery automates the identification of assets across hybrid multicloud ecosystems, delivering complete, real-time visibility from a single pane of glass. It operates seamlessly across on-premise environments through NetChange IPLocator and across major cloud providers, such as AWS, Azure, and private clouds, via the Cloud Observer product. 

Every network object discovered (switch, router, VM…) is enriched with valuable metadata such as location, owner, or cost center. This data is harmonized and consolidated into a unified dataset, giving IT teams a clear, accurate picture of what’s connected across their entire infrastructure. The result is a real-time view of the network’s true state—allowing organizations to identify anomalies, uncover vulnerabilities, and reconcile discrepancies between the intended and actual configurations.

Continuous Asset Discovery and Data Reconciliation

Unlike one-off scans, Unified Asset Discovery is a continuous process. It constantly compares live network data with existing inventory records in IPAM to expose inconsistencies, configuration drifts, or unauthorized changes. This continuous validation ensures that your asset database reflects the network’s true condition at all times.

The SOLIDserver^TM platform’s IPAM Data Reconciliation feature automatically aligns discovered assets with the intended network state. This dynamic synchronization maintains an accurate inventory and ensures that all network objects are properly accounted for. Over time, this process establishes a Trusted Network Source of Truth (NSoT)—a living, reliable foundation of structured data that drives operational efficiency.

A trusted, accurate dataset is not just a convenience; it’s the cornerstone of effective integration and network automation. Once network data is consistent, complete, and validated, organizations can use it to drive more advanced initiatives across their IT ecosystem.

From Trusted Data to Smarter Network Automation

Accurate, real-time network data is what enables true automation. Unified Asset Discovery feeds this trusted data into a DDI-enabled Network Source of Truth, empowering IT teams to automate critical processes. For example, organizations can automatically update firewall policies based on actual device inventories, such as with the Fortinet and EfficientIP integration, streamline SD-WAN orchestration, or deploy new devices through Zero Touch Provisioning with confidence that configurations are correct from day one.

Traditional CMDB and IT Asset Management (ITAM) systems often depend on incomplete or outdated data, limiting their value. By contrast, thanks to its rich APIs, EfficientIP’s DDI-enabled NSoT provides these systems with the accurate, timely information they need to operate effectively. Through integration with CMDB, ITSM, SIEM, SOAR, or Technology Asset Intelligence (TAI) platforms, organizations can extend the reach and reliability of their existing network and security ecosystem.

In short,  the most valuable and actionable data for effective network automation resides in the DDI-enabled NSoT enhanced by Unified Asset Discovery, providing the real-time ground truth that CMDB and ITAM rely on to remain accurate.

The Benefits: From Cost Optimization to Compliance Confidence

By implementing Unified Asset Discovery, organizations gain a powerful combination of cost savings, efficiency, and risk reduction. Time previously spent on manual tracking and reconciliation is reclaimed, allowing teams to focus on innovation and strategic priorities. Continuous drift detection simplifies risk management and compliance, ensuring that the network remains aligned with policies and standards.

Financially, the ability to identify redundant or underused assets translates directly into savings, both in capital expenditures and ongoing operational costs. From a security perspective, gaining visibility into every connected asset reduces the likelihood of unmonitored or rogue devices introducing vulnerabilities. And because discovery data is harmonized and normalized, reports and audits are more accurate and credible.

In essence, Unified Asset Discovery doesn’t just make IT management easier—it makes it smarter, safer, and more cost-effective.

Real-World Impact: From Discovery to Efficiency

Unified Asset Discovery isn’t just a back-end improvement—it drives tangible results across multiple operational and strategic areas including optimizing resources, strengthening network security, and enhancing operations. Valuable use cases include the following:

1. Repurpose Zombie Assets:

Identify idle servers or unused IPs consuming resources, and redeploy or retire them to optimize costs.

2. Uncover Unknown Devices:

Detect unauthorized or rogue devices connected to the network to strengthen your security posture and prevent data leaks.

3. Enhance Reporting Accuracy:

Ensure that reports and audits reflect real-world conditions by normalizing and unifying asset data.

4. Track Changes Over Time:

Monitor historical asset changes for better troubleshooting, compliance audits, and capacity planning.

Each of these use cases demonstrates how accurate asset visibility translates directly into creation of a more agile, transparent, and secure IT environment—one where decision-making is based on facts, not guesswork.

Conclusion: Taking Back Control of Your Network

As IT environments grow increasingly distributed, visibility is no longer optional—it’s fundamental to success. Without an accurate, real-time understanding of your assets, you risk wasting resources, falling out of compliance, and leaving your network exposed to threats.

By adopting Unified Asset Discovery, IT teams can once again see their entire environment clearly. They can ensure every asset is visible, accountable, and aligned with business objectives. Backed by a Trusted Network Source of Truth, organizations can improve network assurance, streamline compliance, accelerate automation, and optimize resource costs.

EfficientIP’s Unified Asset Discovery turns network complexity into clarity—helping you take back control of your hybrid multicloud environment and build a foundation for smarter, safer, and more efficient network management.

By applying patented AI-Driven DGA Detection with Tuple Clustering, entire clusters of domains related to the ViperSoftX variants were identified by EfficientIP’s DNS Security years before they became active. This uncovered the systematic use of domain generation algorithms to sustain command-and-control operations, providing early visibility into one of today’s most persistent infostealer families. The findings confirm how DNS-centric Threat Intelligence delivers protection where traditional security tools fall short, ensuring organizations can stop cyber threats before they strike.

AI-Driven DGA Detection Reveals Infostealer Before It Struck

In our previous blogs, we detailed how EfficientIP’s DNS Threat Intelligence first detected the EIP-458 Infostealer, exposed its stealth tactics, and later confirmed its correlation to the notorious ViperSoftX malware family. Those findings showed how DNS Security solutions can reveal what traditional defenses miss. But the story goes further: by identifying the domain generation algorithms (DGAs) driving this campaign, EfficientIP researchers uncovered entire clusters of dormant domains long before they became active. This early visibility meant the infostealer could be detected and contained before launching its malicious activity at scale.

What Are DGAs?

A Domain Generation Algorithm (DGA) is a technique attackers use to automatically create large numbers of domain names. Malware relies on these domains to conduct its malicious activity: contact its command-and-control servers, send stolen data, or receive instructions. One of the key uses of DGAs is enabling data exfiltration, where stolen information is quietly transferred out through rotating domains. By frequently switching domains, attackers evade detection and keep their operations alive. From early cyber threats like Conficker to modern ones like Doki, DGAs show how threat actors evolve to bypass defenses. This is why AI-Driven DGA Detection is critical for stopping them before activation.

Most security tools try to spot DGAs by the domain name itself—its characters and structure (odd mixes, uncommon words, statistical “entropy”), sometimes with ML. Attackers now craft names that resemble normal domain names, so this method often misses threats and triggers false alarms.

EfficientIP’s AI-driven DNS security, powered by patented Tuple Clustering threat detection, focuses on behavior—not just domain names. It tracks who is querying which domains and when, bundling these signals into simple “tuples.” Clustering those tuples reveals groups that move together like a DGA family, even if some data is missing. The result is earlier detection of active and dormant DGAs with fewer false positives.

How the Infostealer Used DGAs to Build Resilient Domain Clusters

In researching the infostealer variants covered in our previous blogs, EfficientIP’s researchers found clear signs of domain generation algorithms within DNS Threat Intelligence. One of the most notable patterns was the creation of systematic domain clusters. Instead of relying on a single command-and-control server,  threat actors built families of domains following strict prefix, suffix, and TLD rules. Examples include names like slimawriter.com, slimardb.xyz, and slimashlow.com, all sharing the same structured pattern.A closer look revealed that all domains in the Slima cluster began with the prefix slima, followed by descriptors such as db, shlow, tfdsc, virtualb, or writer, and ended with either .com or .xyz. Among them, slimawriter.com stood out, as it was the only registered domain and operated as the active C2 server. Queries to this domain were significantly more frequent than to its peers, which remained dormant or unregistered but available as reserves to be activated if needed.

Extending the same AI-Driven DNS security analysis across DNS traffic uncovered additional clusters with different prefixes, including yeild, activato, freed, and quasar. 

Together, these naming rules — five prefixes, five suffixes, and two TLDs — formed a systematic framework capable of producing hundreds of domains. This structure gives  threat actors a scalable pool of interchangeable infrastructure, ensuring that when one domain is blocked or seized, others can immediately replace it.

This design illustrates how the campaign achieved resilience through redundancy. By rotating through structured clusters of domains, attackers ensured continuity and persistence, allowing them to operate undisturbed and conduct data exfiltration while making takedown efforts far more complex.

Domain Generation Algorithms Enabled Persistence

What enabled these structured clusters to exist at scale was the use of domain generation algorithms (DGAs). Instead of manually registering domains, the 2025 Zero-Day malware relied on a PowerShell routine that automatically produced hundreds of variations by combining prefixes, suffixes, and TLDs. This automation gave  threat actors a renewable infrastructure: when one domain was blocked, new ones could instantly take its place.

A trimmed excerpt of the routine is shown below:

# Simplified DGA domain generation (trimmed for safety)
$domains  = @(“com”,”xyz”)
$prefixes = @(“activato”,”slima”,”yeild”,”quasa”,”freed”)
$suffixes = @(“rdb”,”writer”,”shlow”,”tfdsc”,”virtualb”)

foreach ($tld in $domains) {
  foreach ($pre in $prefixes) {
    foreach ($suf in $suffixes) {
      $fqdn = “$pre$suf.$tld”
      $res  = Query-DnsUpdates -targetDomain $fqdn   # fetch TXT records
      # Payload processing logic removed for safety
    }
  }
}

This algorithm generated domains such as slimawriter[.]com, freedrdb[.]xyz, or activatoshlow[.]com. The malware then queried their TXT records to retrieve encoded payload fragments. With this method, attackers could rotate in dormant or unregistered domains the moment active ones were blocked, ensuring continuity.

EfficientIP designated this DGA family as EIP-455-EconoMimics. Using its AI-driven Security based on innovative Tuple Clustering technology, the clusters were detected by EfficientIP’s DNS Security before they became operational. The algorithm worked by analyzing anomalies in DNS behavior and correlating them with graph theory and unsupervised machine learning.  Unlike syntax-only methods, AI-Driven DGA Detection exposed both active C2s and dormant domains. This gave defenders predictive visibility into attacker infrastructure. 

The DNS Threat Intelligence graph below shows client activity associated with EIP-455 from May to September 2025. Peaks in predictable DGA client counts reveal when the malware attempted to query generated domains, while sharp drops reflect blocks or inactivity. This timeline illustrates how AI-Driven DNS Security continuously tracks attacker behavior.

The EIP-455-EconoMimics family was then added to EfficientIP’s DNS Threat Intelligence feed, protecting our customers even while the 2025 Zero-Day malware was still dormant. This detection is clearly illustrated in EfficientIP’s DNS Intelligence Center (DNS IC) dashboard. The screenshot below shows systematic clusters such as slima, activato, freed, quasar, and yeild, all tagged under EIP-455 ID. Most domains still returned NXDOMAIN, highlighting how the DNS Security AI-Driven DGA Detection exposed dormant infrastructure long before it became operational — enabling proactive protection.

DGAs give the campaign long-term persistence and make takedown efforts far more difficult, since defenders cannot simply neutralize a handful of domains. By focusing on behavioral DNS signals, EfficientIP’s AI-Driven DGA Detection with Tuple Clustering revealed not only the active C2s but also dormant and unregistered domains. This enabled EfficientIP DNS Security Solution to identify attacker infrastructure early and protect customers by disrupting campaigns before they became operational.

AI-Driven DGA Detection Also Protected Against the ViperSoftX Variant

In our previous blog, we detailed how EfficientIP’s DNS Threat Intelligence exposed the link between the infostealer variants and the notorious ViperSoftX family. That AI-Driven security analysis confirmed attribution through cryptographic reuse and overlapping infrastructure. But the research also revealed that the ViperSoftX malware is using the PwrSh:CryptoStealer-C DGA. AI-Driven DGA Detection had identified the PwrSh:CryptoStealer-C malicious activity in our DNS Threat Intelligence as far back as June 2022.The first finding came from observing that domains seen in recent infostealer activity were consistent with historical ViperSoftX infrastructure. These domains followed systematic naming rules, combining predictable prefixes such as wmail, fairu, bideo, privatproxy, and ahoravideo with suffixes like endpoint, blog, chat, cdn, and schnellvpn, across both .com and .xyz. The screenshot below shows the threat matches in EfficientIP’s DNS Threat Intelligence dashboard between May and September 2025, where these recurring domain patterns were identified. 

Tracking back the malicious activity with AI-Driven DNS security revealed an even deeper history. Monitoring command-and-control (C&C) traffic showed that the DGA family has been active since June 2022. This demonstrated that EfficientIP’s AI-Driven DGA Detection had been flagging ViperSoftX-related infrastructure long before the most recent infostealer variants came to light.

Looking further back across the full four-year monitoring window revealed the true scale of the campaign. Thousands of related domains tied to ViperSoftX and its variants were generated during that period, many of which were detected and flagged by EfficientIP’s DNS Security before activation. This long-term visibility confirmed that the operators relied on systematic, large-scale domain generation to maintain persistence and ensure their infrastructure could survive takedowns.

Recent monitoring of dns traffic confirms that the PwrSh:CryptoStealer-C DGA family is far from inactive. Between May and September 2025, EfficientIP’s DNS Security solution identified a steady stream of domain-generation activity, clearly visible as a continuous line of threat detections. This demonstrates that ViperSoftX and its variants remain highly active over time.

Key Takeaways

From uncovering stealthy infostealer variants to detecting the long-term domain-generation activity behind ViperSoftX and its variants, this AI-Driven security research shows how attackers are building resilient infrastructures designed to evade takedowns. By leveraging patented AI-Driven DGA Detection with Tuple Clustering, EfficientIP’s 360° DNS Security solution identified these cyber threats years before they became fully active—revealing systematic domain clusters, tracking C&C activity, and confirming the evolution of one of today’s most dangerous infostealer families. This early threat detection ensures organizations remain protected against campaigns that traditional security tools fail to detect.

EfficientIP’s DNS Threat Intelligence has detected a new ViperSoftX Infostealer variant linked to the previously exposed EIP-458-CryptoStealer. What began as a single-domain, stealthy zero-day has evolved into a complex, well-structured, and resilient campaign designed to evade takedowns. Attackers now reinforce their infrastructure with systematic domain clusters, selective registrations, and shared configurations, making the infostealer more persistent and dangerous. This blog shows the critical role of DNS Threat Intelligence in exposing such hidden threats.

Recap: How DNS Threat Intelligence First Exposed the EIP Infostealer

The EIP-458-CryptoStealer, later confirmed as a ViperSoftX Infostealer variant, was first detected by EfficientIP’s DNS Threat Intelligence through DNS traffic monitoring. This early detection was crucial as the zero-day malware employed advanced evasion tactics, shifting from DNS TXT manipulation to HTTPS and operating in memory with encoded data to enable stealthy data exfiltration. Traditional security measures like antivirus, EDR, and firewalls proved insufficient against such stealthy threats, underscoring the necessity of DNS Security as a critical layer of defense. Our previous blog detailed this deep research, showing how DNS Threat Intelligence uncovered the campaign and exposed its evolving tactics.

A New Variant  of the Infostealer Recently Exposed

Continuous monitoring by DNS Threat Intelligence identified a new zero-day variant of the EIP-458 Infostealer campaign by mid-2025, formally designated EIP-461-CryptoStealer v2. The variant reveals that the campaign is expanding, showing greater persistence, and evolving its tactics. Moreover, the research revealed that the Cryptostealer is, in fact, a ViperSoftX Infostealer variant.

The broadened activity demonstrates that attackers are deliberately strengthening their infrastructure to resist takedown efforts. This shift highlights a determined move toward long-term durability, persistence, and reach.

Strengthening Attack Infrastructure With Structured Clusters

In analyzing this new ViperSoftX Infostealer variant, researchers found that attackers no longer relied on isolated domains. Instead, they built structured clusters with clear naming rules, rotating them in as needed. This systematic design gave the campaign persistence, even when individual domains were blocked or taken down.

We’ll cover these techniques in depth — including how EfficientIP’s AI-driven detection exposed entire clusters before they became operational — in our next blog focused on early detection of domain-based threats.

Coordinated Infrastructure and Registration Tactics

Expanding beyond domain patterns, the campaign demonstrated a carefully coordinated approach to infrastructure and registration. While hundreds of interchangeable domains were algorithmically possible, only a select few were formally registered and made operational. 

Notably, activatordb.com was registered on March 16, 2025 and slimawriter.com on April 17, 2025, both through Njalla, a registrar known for providing anonymity services. In contrast, quasardb.com appeared legitimate — registered since 2007, tied to QUASAR DATABASE TECHNOLOGIES, hosted on Microsoft Azure, with ownership validated through TXT records.

The use of VirusTotal Graph quickly highlighted links across these domains. Several unregistered domains were already flagged as malicious by antivirus engines and associated with a specific PowerShell script (SHA256: db0bb352bd600db588e65f7bd1ee74bfad9cb11ee67f59497e2d442c6f962aa9). This script was responsible for downloading the stager from domains such as slimawriter.com, underscoring the operational role of this infrastructure.

Graph-based analysis of DNS infrastructure confirmed that these domains were not isolated artifacts but part of a linked ecosystem. Shared configurations, overlapping registration details, and synchronized activity patterns revealed deliberate planning by the attackers. By registering only the minimal number of domains needed to keep the campaign active, while leaving many others dormant or unregistered, they built an infrastructure that was both resilient and scalable.

This selective registration strategy gave attackers the ability to operate with stealth and efficiency: a few active domains maintained the campaign, while the larger pool of potential domains remained hidden until needed. Combined with the systematic naming and DGA logic, this coordination ensured the campaign could endure disruption and scale on demand.

Link to Notorious ViperSoftX Confirmed

A critical finding in the analysis is the confirmed link to the notorious ViperSoftX malware family. ViperSoftX is a long-running infostealer known for targeting credentials, cryptocurrency wallets, and browser data — and it remains active today, with ongoing campaigns observed in the wild.

ViperSoftX Activity June 2025

The present campaign shows direct overlap with this family, confirmed through cryptographic and infrastructure evidence. The strongest proof comes from cryptographic reuse. Analysis revealed that the malware employed an RSA public key (KeyBlob) to verify payload signatures — the exact same key previously identified in ViperSoftX samples. In hexadecimal form, the key is:

The reuse of this unique cryptographic signature provides high-confidence attribution, confirming that the same threat actors are behind both the current malware and ViperSoftX. Publicly available research on GitHub further corroborates this link, documenting earlier PowerShell variants of ViperSoftX using the same key.

Historical infrastructure patterns reinforce the connection. Previous ViperSoftX variants relied on a similar domain generation scheme, using prefixes like wmail, fairu, bideo, privatproxy, and ahoravideo, combined with suffixes such as endpoint, blog, chat, cdn, and schnellvpn, across .com and .xyz TLDs. 

The continuity of domain-generation logic, combined with the cryptographic overlap, confirms this is not a copycat but an evolution of the same malware line. The domains observed in the current campaign belong to the same DGA family (PwrSh:CryptoStealer-C) that EfficientIP has been tracking in its DNS threat intelligence feed, DNS Threat Pulse (DTP), since June 2022. This long-term presence demonstrates that the same ViperSoftX operators have been refining and extending their campaigns for years.

This attribution significantly elevates the threat level. Attackers are not only reusing a proven infostealer family but also scaling it with systematic clusters, coordinated infrastructure, and DGA-powered persistence, transforming ViperSoftX into a more resilient and persistent campaign.

The EfficientIP DNS Security solution can detect such resilient attacks thanks to the combination of advanced DNS Filtering and a dynamic threat intelligence feed, enabling early detection of suspicious activity and blocking malware, phishing, and data exfiltration attempts.

Key IOC Summary (Domains and Hash Files Only)

Recommendations

The evolution of EIP-461-CryptoStealer v2 demonstrates that modern infostealers are designed for persistence and resilience, evading traditional endpoint and perimeter defenses. To reduce exposure to stealthy malware campaigns such as the evolving EIP Infostealer, organizations must adopt proactive DNS-centric defenses:

1. Implement layered security with DNS traffic analysis
   Monitor anomalies such as TXT-only queries, unusual packet sizes, or systematic domain patterns by leveraging DNS Security. DNS is often the first and only layer to reveal malicious activity.
2. Regularly update DNS threat intelligence feeds
   Ensure resolvers are enriched with continuously updated DNS-Centric intelligence feeds capable of identifying newly generated domains and malicious clusters.
3. Enable granular DNS filtering at the resolver level
   Block malicious infrastructure in real time using granular client filtering to disrupt C2 communications, stop data exfiltration,  and prevent attackers from rotating through systematic domain clusters.
4. Integrate DNS insights into SOC and SIEM workflows
   Feed DNS IOCs into SOC playbooks and SIEM dashboards to accelerate investigation, triage, and incident response.
5. Conduct regular DNS audits and risk assessments
   Regular DNS risk assessments help organizations uncover hidden exposures and validate their defensive posture.
6. Utilize AI-driven algorithms for malware and DGA detection and analytics
   Tools such as EfficientIP’s patented DGA Tuple Clustering engine can expose malicious clusters before they become operational. The DNS Intelligence Center delivers insightful, actionable, and reliable DNS analytics to strengthen threat detection, accelerate investigations, and support forensic analysis.
   

By implementing these measures, organizations can ensure that DNS Security serves as a front-line defense — proactively detecting, blocking, and anticipating infostealer campaigns before they cause data theft, financial losses, or regulatory exposure.

Conclusion

The discovery of a new EIP-458 Infostealer variant shows how the campaign continues to expand with systematic domains and resilient infrastructure. The confirmed link to the notorious ViperSoftX family underscores the severity of this threat: attackers are not only reusing proven malware but also scaling it into stronger, more persistent campaigns. According to a Forrester study, 85% of security leaders conduct regular DNS audits to improve cloud infrastructure security. EfficientIP helps put this into practice with a free DNS Risk Assessment, enabling organizations to validate their exposure and strengthen DNS as a front-line defense.

Explore how key DNS Security Capabilities—Hardened Infrastructure, DNS Threat Intelligence, Granular DNS Filtering, DNS Traffic Analysis, AI-Powered Detection, and Adaptive Response—transform DNS into the first line of defense against modern cyber threats.

Synopsis

We all know DNS as the internet’s directory, quietly translating names into IP addresses – yet many organizations treat it as an afterthought in their security strategy. Cyber-criminals disagree, and actively exploit this blind spot with phishing attacks, malware payloads, DGA-driven campaigns and clever data exfiltration techniques.

In our latest white paper, we reveal why DNS has become a silent threat and introduce six DNS security capabilities that elevate it from a passive resolver to a strategic control layer. By combining hardened infrastructure, DNS threat intelligence, granular DNS filtering, continuous traffic analysis, AI-powered detection, and adaptive response, you can establish strong DNS protection that detects and blocks sophisticated attacks right at the network edge. Read on to see how embedding these capabilities across your enterprise network security framework makes DNS your first line of defense against advanced DNS security risks.

DNS: The Hidden Attack Surface

The role of DNS as a critical yet exposed layer is underscored in a commissioned study delivered by Forrester Consulting on behalf of EfficientIP. According to the study, 95% of organizations experienced cyber-attacks or vulnerabilities related to DNS in the past 12 months. The most common cyber threats included phishing attacks, ransomware, data theft and DDoS attacks. To mitigate these risks, organizations must implement robust DNS Security Capabilities that provide visibility, threat detection, and control at the DNS layer. Yet despite DNS’s pivotal role in IT infrastructure, 67% lack visibility into DNS traffic, deep DNS analytics and intelligence. This lack of visibility gives attackers a low-resistance entry point—allowing them to establish command-and-control channels, exfiltrate data, and persist inside networks without detection.

Why Traditional Security Solutions Fall Short

Your firewall or endpoint agent might be working overtime, but are they protecting the DNS?  Most legacy tools like firewalls, IPS, and EDR lack DNS-layer visibility. They miss key indicators like DGAs, tunneling, or NXDOMAIN spikes—leaving a critical blind spot. Without DNS-layer enforcement, threat actors can operate undetected and cyber threats can move freely under the radar. Legacy DNS protection tools lack policy granularity and often crumble under high-volume DDoS attacks. It’s no surprise that 90% of security leaders now see DNS monitoring as vital as next-gen firewalls.

Business Impacts

When DNS is unprotected, the costs quickly add up. Beyond the $1.1 million average cost per incident reported in the Forrester Study, the consequences escalate quickly—causing service and application downtime, data breaches, lost productivity, and regulatory exposure. DNS vulnerabilities can trigger steep fines under GDPR, NIS2, or DORA, while disruption and loss of customer trust leave a lasting impact. The top damage vectors include financial loss, legal penalties, business interruption, and brand reputation. DNS security is now essential to protect both your bottom line and long-term resilience.

Six DNS Security Capabilities You Can’t Ignore

With the right tools and processes, DNS can be transformed from a liability into a proactive security control point. Our latest white paper highlights six essential DNS security capabilities:

1. Hardened infrastructure & DDoS resilience

Availability and reliability of DNS are critical for business continuity. A secure architecture must deliver resilience against both volumetric and stealth attacks. With built-in redundancy, high-performance caching, DNSSEC, and hybrid DNS engines that can be switched in real time, organizations can prevent downtime, deploy upgrades faster, withstand zero-day threats, and avoid single points of failure. These foundational DNS Security Capabilities ensure service continuity and robust protection.

2. Internet-scale DNS Threat Intelligence

DNS data reflects global internet activity, making it a powerful source of threat intelligence. AI-driven platforms consolidate and analyze this massive amount of data, including newly observed domains (NODs), WHOIS records, certificate attributes, and traffic patterns to identify threats early and calculate a risk score that prioritizes malicious activity. Leveraging this intelligence, continuous feeds, such as EfficientIP’s DNS Threat Pulse (DTP), deliver up-to-date insights into malicious domains, enabling proactive blocking of phishing attacks, malware, DGAs, and other DNS-based threats before resolution occurs. This comprehensive DNS-centric threat intelligence improves detection, supports automated protection, and reinforces security across hybrid environments.

3. Granular DNS filtering for Zero-Trust enforcement

DNS filtering goes far more than basic domain blacklisting to enforce fine-grained access control aligned with Zero Trust principles. By leveraging client attributes (user identity, device type, subnet), enriched domain categorization, tagging, and DNS threat intelligence, organizations can implement micro-segmentation and application zoning. As part of the broader set of DNS Security Capabilities, granular filtering strengthens Zero Trust by enabling precise, identity-based access control. Identity-aware controls can deny or redirect queries to safe pages before connections are made, reducing exposure and strengthening internal segmentation.

Zero-Trust principles can be further enforced with strict allow-listing that precisely defines which domains are accessible by each of the clients, dramatically reducing DNS security risks.

4. Continuous DNS traffic analysis & early threat detection

Even with proactive defenses in place, real-time visibility into DNS transactions is essential. Advanced analytics help monitor transaction patterns, response times and anomalies, both globally and at the client level, while User Behavioural Analysis (UBA) profiles normal activity over time, detecting suspicious deviations. Together, these techniques uncover threats that often go undetected by traditional security solutions, including DNS tunneling, data theft, zero-day malware, compromised accounts, and even insider abuse.

5. AI-powered threat detection (DGA, phishing, anomalies)

Modern threat actors increasingly leverage automation, domain generated algorithms (DGAs), and brand impersonation to evade detection. To combat this, AI-driven detection capabilities elevate DNS security by revealing patterns and anomalies that traditional tools often miss. These solutions go beyond static IOC matching, analyzing traffic behavior, linguistic signals, and visual similarities to proactively detect malicious activity. For phishing attacks, AI applies natural language processing (NLP) and visual analysis (Image Recognition) to detect look-alike or newly registered domains. To counter DGAs, the most advanced AI-based tools use unsupervised clustering and graph analysis to detect unusual clients-to-domain interactions in the DNS traffic. With DNS threats becoming more sophisticated, AI-driven technologies significantly enhance detection speed and accuracy.

6. Adaptive, automated response & recovery

Detection must be followed by action. DNS-centric response enables real-time, automated countermeasures that adapt to the nature and context of each threat. These include blocking malicious sources, rate-limiting traffic per client, or activating Quarantine Mode, which isolates IP addresses with malicious behaviors to protect the server and legitimate clients. In extreme conditions, advanced solutions can detect when server capacity is at risk and activate emergency response mechanisms that keep cached DNS answers available, ensuring uninterrupted access to critical applications. DNS-layer insights can be integrated with security ecosystem tools like SIEM, SOAR, and NAC for centralized correlation, enhanced visibility, and automated remediation workflows. This orchestration helps unify threat response across platforms, accelerates investigation, and ensures faster, more effective mitigation of DNS security risks.

Together, these six DNS security capabilities form a Protective DNS (PDNS) solution that shifts DNS from a passive resolver into your organization’s first line of defense against phishing attacks, malware, DGA activity, data exfiltration and other advanced cyber threats.

Strategic Benefits of DNS Security

DNS security capabilities offer a unique advantage by embedding protection, detection, and response into the DNS resolution process—enabling early threat prevention, accurate detection, and greater operational resilience. 

By leveraging advanced DNS security, a resilient DNS solution ensures service continuity, even during attacks, while automated containment reduces operational disruption. This allows security teams to respond swiftly, save time, and increase operational efficiency.

Blocking threats at the DNS resolution layer minimizes exposure time and risk of data theft, making it a proactive defense. Meanwhile, real-time DNS visibility provides early insight into attacker behavior—such as suspicious queries or command-and-control setup—before payloads are delivered. 

AI-driven analysis accelerates detection of advanced and evasive cyber threats like DGAs, phishing, and zero-day domains that bypass traditional tools. 

Finally, DNS-layer enforcement contributes to faster threat response and helps meet compliance requirements under GDPR, NIS2, and DORA through logging, access control, and traceability. DNS is no longer just infrastructure—it’s a critical control point for security, compliance, and resilience in modern enterprises.

Conclusion

Cloud transformation and the evolving threat landscape have pushed DNS to the forefront of cybersecurity strategy. Once treated as a silent infrastructure component, DNS is now recognized as a strategic part of enterprise network security—essential to an organization’s ability to proactively protect data, detect threats early, respond effectively, and improve resilience.

In today’s hybrid and multicloud environments, where users are remote, traffic flows are decentralized, and attack surfaces shift constantly, traditional perimeter-based defenses are no longer enough. DNS security capabilities are becoming foundational to modern security architectures. Securing the DNS layer empowers organizations to block cyber threats before they escalate, detect malicious behavior that bypasses conventional tools, and respond automatically to reduce dwell time and limit impact. It also supports Zero Trust initiatives, cloud security strategies, and compliance readiness.

The time to act is now. Elevate DNS from a passive risk to a strategic security and compliance enabler—delivering visibility, resilience, and control.

The cloud revolution has brought enterprises a wave of agility, scalability, and innovation. But as organizations accelerate into hybrid and multi-cloud architectures, the security terrain has shifted—often in unpredictable and complex ways. With new possibilities come new exposures. And at the heart of this evolving landscape lies one of the most overlooked yet vital assets in cybersecurity: DNS.

A new Forrester Consulting DNS Security Study, commissioned by EfficientIP, draws back the curtain on how organizations are contending with this shifting terrain. Surveying 218 senior security decision-makers across North America and Europe, the study reveals an unsettling truth: DNS is no longer just a back-end utility—it is now the frontline in the battle for cloud security.

The Cloud’s Double-Edged Sword

Enterprises are doubling down on public cloud and hybrid deployments. AI is turbocharging this cloud transformation, accelerating both innovation and the spread of decentralized infrastructure. Private cloud adoption is also on the rise, as businesses seek a balance between speed, compliance, and control.

But with greater decentralization comes a broader attack surface. Security teams find themselves navigating a sea of new risks—ones that stretch well beyond the traditional perimeter. DNS-based cyber threats, in particular, are surging. The Forrester DNS Security Study confirms this surge: DNS is no longer a niche concern, it has become a major vector for phishing attacks, ransomware, and DDoS attacks, all of which continue to evolve in scale and sophistication.

DNS Under Attack

The numbers are sobering. According to the Forrester DNS Security Report, 95% of organizations faced DNS-related cyberattacks or vulnerabilities in the past year alone. Among the most prevalent were phishing attacks and ransomware, each affecting 52% of respondents, with DDoS attacks not far behind at 50%.

These attacks are not merely technical hiccups—they carry real and measurable consequences. Over half of those surveyed reported financial losses ranging from $500,000 to $5 million per incident. For larger enterprises, losses exceeding $1 million were notably more common. And the damage doesn’t stop at the balance sheet. Sixty-two percent of organizations experienced productivity loss or system downtime, while nearly 60% saw their brand reputation take a hit.

Perhaps most alarmingly, DNS vulnerabilities are increasingly exploited for data exfiltration—a stealthy and dangerous method for leaking sensitive information undetected. More than half of respondents confirmed breaches involving sensitive data, exposing them to further scrutiny and long-term data security risks. And one-third of organizations faced legal or regulatory consequences due to inadequate DNS security controls, including non-compliance with critical frameworks such as GDPR, HIPAA, NIS2, and NIST standards.In response, organizations are shifting their strategies to strengthen resilience against modern cyber threats. They’re prioritizing threat intelligence, secure cloud migration, and stronger detection and response capabilities—while increasingly turning to AI-driven technologies and DNS expertise to future-proof their defenses. This evolution underscores the critical role of DNS security in enabling long-term operational continuity and adaptability.

DNS Visibility Gaps Threaten Modern Networks

As hybrid and multi-cloud environments grow more complex, the role of DNS in securing modern networks  and strengthening enterprise network security is becoming increasingly critical. According to the DNS Security Forrester Study, 71% of security leaders feel overwhelmed by this complexity—driving the need for greater visibility and intelligence at the DNS layer. 

Yet many organizations still lack the tools to meet this demand: 67% report limited visibility into DNS traffic, along with insufficient DNS analytics and DNS Threat Intelligence to detect misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, or DNS-based attacks in time. Further compounding the issue, 67% struggle to process the growing volume of DNS data required for timely detection and response.These blind spots can lead to severe consequences, including system outages, data security risks,  degraded user experiences, and legal exposure from data breaches.

The Limits of Traditional DNS Security Approaches

Despite DNS’s foundational role in digital communication, it remains a blind spot in many organizations’ defenses. Most traditional perimeter-based security tools—such as next-generation firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, and endpoint protection—weren’t built to understand DNS traffic in depth. They lack the native inspection capabilities, DNS Threat Intelligence, behavioral analytics, and filtering precision required to defend against modern DNS security risks and cyber threats, including zero-day malware, phishing attacks, data exfiltration, and DNS tunneling.

The Forrester DNS Security Study underscores this disconnect. More than 60% of security leaders acknowledged that traditional tools are being outpaced by the complexity of today’s cloud environments. This realization is prompting a strategic shift: 96% of surveyed organizations are now rethinking their enterprise network security architecture, turning toward automation, integration, and network-wide visibility.

Elevating DNS in the Security Strategy

In response to the growing DNS security risks and the limitations of traditional security tools, security leaders are shifting their strategies—prioritizing visibility, control, and detection at the DNS layer. Threat intelligence has risen to the top of the investment list, closely followed by improvements in cloud security, cyber-awareness, detection and response, and data privacy strategies.

Many are looking further ahead. AI-driven security technologies are now on the radar for over half of organizations, as is the need to build internal DNS expertise. Interest is also growing in securing IoT and OT environments, and in deploying SASE architectures that better support distributed workforces.

As part of this shift, DNS is being elevated by security leaders from a back-end protocol to a critical frontline defense. According to the Forrester DNS Security Study, 90% now view DNS monitoring as equally important as firewalls and network traffic analysis tools, recognizing its unique role in detecting threats early—especially in hybrid and cloud environments. DNS security is increasingly valued for its ability to provide deep visibility, enable Granular DNS filtering, and enhance threat detection. Many organizations are also leveraging machine learning to power anomaly detection and accelerate their response to sophisticated attacks. DNS Threat Intelligence also becomes a critical capability for identifying cyber threats, speeding investigations, and improving forensics.

This evolution also aligns with the growing adoption of Zero Trust Architecture. With 84% of security leaders prioritizing Zero Trust to secure distributed, perimeterless environments, the approach is becoming a foundational element of modern security strategy. Zero Trust not only enhances access control but also strengthens data security and regulatory compliance. Notably, 80% of organizations are now leveraging Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) to improve cloud security.

Protective DNS, a Strategic Imperative

The DNS Security Forrester research confirms that DNS has become a top-tier security concern in the cloud era. With 95% of organizations experiencing DNS-related attacks, and 71% struggling with hybrid-cloud visibility and control, it’s clear that legacy security approaches are no longer sufficient.

Positioning DNS as a first line of defense empowers security teams, SecOps, and SOCs to manage DNS cyber threats across their entire lifecycle. It enables earlier threat detection, faster response, stronger protection of users and enhanced data security—ensuring both service continuity and operational resilience.

An effective DNS security solution must go beyond domain blocking. It should enforce advanced, user-aware DNS filtering policies and leverage real-time, DNS-centric Threat Intelligence. To stay ahead of today’s threat landscape, it must also detect and mitigate sophisticated attacks—including zero-day malware, DGAs, phishing attacks, data exfiltration, DNS tunneling, command-and-control activity, and DDoS—using patented AI-driven techniques. Automated responses to threats with adaptive countermeasures, actionable insights and seamless integration into the broader security ecosystem are critical for accelerating remediation and minimizing business impact.

As organizations modernize their cybersecurity strategies, DNS must move to the center—driving resilience, enabling regulatory compliance, and delivering the visibility and agility needed for a secure digital future.