Protecting you from cyber-threats.

Our plans are cost effective, giving you cyber protection and peace of mind for less than the cost of a coffee per user / per month!

We are currently offering a promotion for your first 4 months FREE on annual commitment plans starting by 30th September 2020. No hardware or software is required, and onboarding, support, and a 1-hour cybersecurity incident response is included*.

Contact us for details.

*T&C apply.

CyberShield is a DNS firewall product that protects against online threats such as Phishing, Malware, Botnets, and Ransomware, utilising global and local threat feeds at the DNS layer. It can also be customised to apply network level protection from unwanted content. DNS Firewall is configured and managed via a customer portal with reporting dashboards.

No personal data is collected and retained that can identify individuals. The service has no interest in any data other than to prevent or block DNS queries matched with known threats.

Blocked pages that are false positives are rare. False positive results can be confirmed and rectified usually within 48 hours. In many instances, a shop front has been hijacked and people are coaxed into an exchange of information etc. In the meantime, if you are certain a site is not malicious, your service provider can whitelist the site to allow access at your own risk.

Malicious domains are websites or URLs that either try to damage your computer or device, spy on end users, attempt to install malware or attempt to steal private data for either resale or to directly steal from you.

Hackers will often use a domain that looks similar to a legitimate company or are common typing mistakes for real domains. Links are often sent in communication tools like email and SMS to these fake domains. Additionally, a lot of malicious software uses pseudo-random domain strings to communicate with command and control servers. With CyberShield, access to these malicious domains is blocked at the DNS layer.

Malware is a whole family of malicious software that includes the humble virus. Malware is code that gets on your PC or device and can include things like ransomware that locks your data until you pay, keyloggers that watch what you type on a keyboard (including passwords), bitcoin miners that use your computer and electricity to generate money for someone else, and much, much more.

Phishing is the attempt to obtain private information by tricking the end user into entering data onto a website. Generally, a phishing website tries to look like a legitimate site and will often use a domain name that looks similar to a real company. Usually the first interaction with phishing comes from an email, instant message or other type or electronic communication.

Read our security awareness resources on phishing.

Technically a botnet is a collection of connected computers (hence the term “net”) that coordinate to perform a task; but when put to nefarious use they can be used to launch things like DDoS attacks (which is an attempt to overwhelm resources with a massive number of illegitimate traffic). Many botnets use the DNS to function and in these cases infected machines can be stopped from using PC and network resources.

When you use CyberShield, websites that contain malicious software or engage in phishing are blocked at the DNS layer. This means that no connection to the bad websites or web applications is established. Additionally, when you enable it by changing the DNS settings in the router, every device that uses the network is automatically protected. Alternatively, you can change the settings on individual computers or consoles on the network.

Our primary threat intelligence comes from Akamai, a global provider of internet technology. They are responsible for over 30% of all traffic in the internet and 4% of all global DNS queries (yes that is billions and billions of queries). Anytime a DNS lookup is performed for the very first time anywhere it is automatically quarantined and inspected. If it is determined to be malicious then it is added globally to the block list. Machine learning and AI is also used to detect patterns in seemingly unrelated DNS lookups to detect and block malicious activity. Many botnets use algorithmically generated domain names to function and many have been reverse engineered so that the malicious domains are automatically on the list. And finally, the service incorporates 3rd party feeds from both commercial cybersecurity vendors and the open source community. Recently CERTNZ’s threat feed and our own community-based NZ health threat intelligence platform been added.

We do not recommend turning off other layers of security. This security layer exists outside your network to provide blanket protection when the malware uses a domain name, or the DNS, to either infect the computer or to communicate with command and control servers. Other layers of protection, like a firewall, also protect against packet-level threats while antivirus software can detect and remove malicious code that may come along with something you or your family legitimately installed (think of a nefarious Minecraft mod). And finally, don’t forget to install those operating system updates as soon as they are released.

Yes. CyberShield works over both IPv4 and IPv6.