GetApp, an established software review, and recommendation engine, featured SafeDNS in its “10 Must-Have IT Tools for IT Professionals” report. With an overall rating of 4.7,SafeDNS was mentioned as one of the Must-Have IT Tools for IT Professionals with an overall positive rating of 97%.

Not only this, SafeDNS is a winner of not 1 but 2 GetApp Category Leaders reports in the first half of this year! Check out our incredible win:

• Endpoint Protection
• Cloud Security

SafeDNS has been a top-rated product on GetApp. Our users have made it possible! Check out our performance on GetApp –

Here’s what our users have to say about us:

“SafeDNS is a really great product, we have been using it for over 5 years now and it’s really robust. We deploy for all our customers internal networks and this includes our Azure infrastructure and it just works.”

Jason T.

“We have been using this software for years and are very happy with the results. School and Parents are grateful for the safety this software brings to us. When I check our stats and can see the protection that is being provided. Makes us very happy.”

Ruth P.

Want to review SafeDNS? Click here.

SafeDNS releases the MSP Cloud Teleport Program for any MSP experiencing the End of Life program with Cisco Umbrella.

We are eager to make this sucker punch painless and help you migrate fast & easy to the most fitting web filtering solution. To make the move smooth, join our program to switch from OpenDNS to SafeDNS.

We do everything to stay customer oriented when it comes to MSPs. We don’t need to be an MSP to understand their demand and needs – we simply listen and take into account their feedback that values the most.
No need to go through tons of meetings, NDAs, agreements and contracts to simply get a trial or a quote. There is zero paperwork involved to start working with us

Most importantly, our tech support is always online within a quick reach via chat, phone, or email. If help is needed urgently, we recommend using a chat – in the last month our specialists have taken approximately 67 seconds to reply.

SafeDNS partner program offers a centralized panel to create and manage your customers in one place with no need to login to your customer’s account in order to make changes in the settings. All you need to remember is your username and password to run all your clients.

SafeDNS has released the new MacOS agent. For all Mac users, this means more efficient use of web filtering software and the option to filter separate devices, which differs agents from browser dashboard access.

The process shall be familiar, or simply intuitive for new users. First, you need to register on the website and adjust the settings in your personal account. The next step would be installing the Mac agent from the Support tab on the website or the Dashboard in the cabinet.

The agent enables filtering & allows you to switch between filtering profiles. It can be used within the same tariff on multiple devices. After installation, the agent starts automatically, asking the user for a pin code to change the settings in the agent.

There are several tabs in the agent.

The first tab, Policy, opens by default. In there you select a profile from the list by simply clicking on it.

By clicking on the second tab, System Information, you get a detailed list of system characteristics with network profiles and agent version, protection status, user filtering profiles and much more.

The Debug tab shows the state of interaction of agents with DNS proxy and the ability to send logs to our technical support, which will allow you to understand possible problems in the agent’s work.

On the top panel there is a button for switching the protection status allowing you to disable and enable filtering without logging out.

Below the title of the program there is a user panel that displays the account, IP address, tariff plan and, for most users who have a subscription with an expiration date, the end date of the tariff.

The agent will be available for download tomorrow.

Being compliant with standards means being a quality product. That’s exactly what we are about to discuss in the article below.

SafeDNS helps organizations become compliant with CIPA, IWF, BpjM, HIPAA and other regulations, but for the users new to web filtering, these abbreviations might mean nothing. Whether you are an experienced user or a newbie, the below will clear out any questions you have on various compliances.

Why is CIPA important?

Since the Children Internet Protection Act was passed in 2000, a lot of the online environment had changed. Global digital population is now 5 billion users and counting, but back then in the beginning of the digital era it was about 300 million.

Access to the internet for a lot of teenagers and kids was only available in a school or a public library. Being interested in everything on the global web, students did more than just their homework – the whole internet was opening up for them as the school years were going by. Respectively, the government had to introduce some guidelines for schools & libraries on how to protect the kids from the content they should not see.

That is how and what for CIPA, a document that regulates the exposure of inappropriate content to children, was created back in 2000.

To be CIPA compliant means to guarantee cybersecurity of the schoolkids from obscenity, child pornography & harmful content.

Here is a CIPA compliance checklist.

IWF & Project Arachnid

Being IWF compliant means being against child pornography and blocking all child abuse content online. Internet Watch Foundation has formed a list of URLs to be blocked, and it is constantly updating.
Project Arachnid is also a charity against child sexual abuse based in Canada. The Canadian Centre for Child Protection has already processed 141 billion+ images of child abuse.Those also form the list of prohibited resources that web filtering restricts access to.

BPjM

Similar to the previous regulations, this one comes from Germany. The Federal Review Board for Media Harmful to Minors (German: Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien or BPjM) is a German federal agency that is responsible for censoring media that is suspected to be harmful to the younger generation. The results of such works are formed in The List of Media Harmful to Young People which includes movies, games, printed resources and audio recordings. Once a piece enters the List, it stays there for 25 years. After this period, it might be left out and thought to be no longer harmful or left in.

Here is a BpjM compliance checklist.

HIPAA

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is aimed to safeguard PHI, protected health information. Such information may include names, addresses, phone numbers, medical records, or even photos. What web filtering can do in this regard is to prevent a data breach by simply not gaining access to malicious websites at the corporate network level.

Here is a HIPAA compliance checklist.

As you might have already noticed, our dashboard has a “new” flag – it means AppBlocker is now added to the SafeDNS infrastructure.

AppBlocker is a feature that blocks access to various groups of apps. It helps users keep the business infrastructure safe with a more granular filtering & easily block all domains related to certain applications, such as file sharing, system monitoring, VPNs etc. Basically, any apps that might bring any cybersecurity risks upon your business or data theft to your system.

The apps form groups for blockage:

• ecosystems (Apple, Google, WeChat and more),
• file sharing services (Dropbox, uTorrent, 4shared and more)
• messaging apps (Slack, Snapchat, Viber and more),
• portals (Baidu, Yahoo etc),
• technology services (GitLab, GitHub),
• VoIP (RingCentral, Zoom, LogmeIn and more),
• VPN services (NordVPN, CyberGhost VPN and more),
• cybersecurity services (Shodan, Zscaler),
• financial services (Ethermine, Flypool and more),
• mail services (ProtonMail, Thunderbird, Hushmail and more),
• remote desktop services (RemotePC, AnyDesk, TeamViewer).

To see the full list of apps to block, check out the Categories tab in the dashboard, and then choose AppBlocker.

The user is free to choose any app or app group to block, as the list is fully customizable.

Try it out and see for yourself!

Biden turns to Congress to limit targeted social media ads for kids.

As the New York Times reports, President Biden is eager to shield children from obscene internet content presented in ads. Moreover, he is planning a broader campaign for the mental health of the younger generation, as he reveals in his first State of the Union speech.

“It’s time to strengthen privacy protections, ban targeted advertising to children, demand tech companies stop collecting personal data on our children,” he declares.

The interaction of kids with social media can be extremely harmful and damaging. Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee, leaked some of the documents that state Meta was aware they made teenagers feel bad about themselves. Extreme and obscene content is shown to young people, which causes mental illnesses by diminishing kids’ self-worth.

One of the solutions Biden suggests is to ban targeted ads aimed at children, Bloomberg states. The process will take some time to obtain funding and become a full legal act, and meanwhile, you could protect your kids or yourself from the harmful side of the internet in a couple of clicks with a web filtering solution.

SafeDNS offers different kinds of plans tailored to your needs.

Get your 15-day Free Trial and see for yourself!

In its last year’s report, FDD’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI) compared economic losses from cyberattacks on just one MSP supplier with those from hurricane Sandy. The losses from cyberattacks were 17% higher!

Cyberattacks pose a threat not only to small businesses, but also to national infrastructure as well as US governmental agencies.

An example of such an attack in 2021 is malware integration into MSP provider infrastructure that used VSA Kaseya local software.

Experts believe that hackers use a phishing scheme to penetrate the provider’s network, thus gaining access to clients and remaining unnoticed for extended periods of time. Hundreds of businesses nationwide may become victims of the phishing software threatening operation of various industries and critical infrastructure facilities. This will lead to about $80 bln in losses.

Underestimating such risks is unacceptable, which is why it is necessary to take measures, including changes in federal law. One of the most important additions must be a law enforcing notification about cyberattacks on companies and regulating cybersecurity measures for small, medium and big businesses.

Certain work in the field is already being done. Thus, a draft law by senators Mark Warner and Marco Rubio suggests that all critical infrastructure owners and contractors must inform federal authorities about cyberattacks within 24 hours since the moment of such violation. Currently these reports are voluntary and sent to state authorities.

US Congress is also working on requirements to private companies obliging them to notify about cybersecurity breaches in their networks that may pose threat to federal structures.

CCTI recommends:

· To include cybersecurity report requirements into Sarbanes-Oxley act for all public companies.

· Cybersecurity reports to include an estimate of economic losses.

· To create a cybersecurity manual for small and medium businesses.

Gartner Digital Markets announced that in year 2021 SafeDNS had outperformed by consistently getting featured in multiple GDM flagship reports including “Cybersecurity Software”.

Last year SafeDNS stood out from the competitors and gained an overall score of 4.7 (out of 5) across all three Gartner Digital Markets sites: Capterra, Software Advice, and GetApp.

The badges were obtained thanks to customized solutions that meet our clients’ demands by professional tech support, affordable price and a cutting-edge technology of DNS filtering.

Here’s a review of one of our customers as another confirmation:

“SafeDNS is a really great product, we have been using it for over 5 years now and it’s really robust. We deploy for all our customers internal networks and this includes our Azure infrastructure and it just works.”

~ Jason T. ~

In 2022 cyberattacks will be even more elaborate than in the previous years. The number of cyberattacks will increase, too. This is the forecast made by experts in cybersecurity, Check Point Research (CPR).

Attacks will mostly be aimed at supply chains for medium and big businesses. In 2021 Kaseya and SolarWinds brands fell victims of such attacks.

These are the technologies to be used by cybercriminals this year:

· Fake news

Cybercriminals will be creating and spreading fake news for fraud and phishing attacks. They are going to use AI and deepfake to make photos and videos with the aim to steal confidential information.

· Personal data theft

Theft of personal data of companies’ employees, clients and business partners is becoming more and more large-scale. Attackers are getting greedier, and ransom amounts are going to continue to grow.

· Using mobile malware

With mobile payment systems being used more frequently, malware attacks on consumers’ mobile devices in order to steal more will also become more frequent.

· Large-scale online attacks using new technology

Cybercriminals are keeping up with companies thatconstantly improve technologies and infrastructure to boost their security systems. In the current year criminals will be penetrating company networks using security system testing tools. Such attacks may lead to global failures in company operations.

· Cryptocurrency attacks

Attackers will be turning more attention to hacking crypto exchanges. They will be motivated by last year’s successful cyberattacks, Africryft hack being one of them. As a result of the attack on the South African crypto platform investors lost about $3.6 bln.Active growth of such crimes is expected this year.

Company managements should stay alert and work towards cybercrime prevention by securing every bit of their networks with the use of optimal solutions that will reveal and block more and more elaborate and global cyberattacks.