Sydney, Australia – DECEMBER 21, 2009 — Nominum, the leader in intelligent DNS systems, announced today a powerful and easily deployable solution for Australian service providers to support new measures announced by the Australian government to improve safety on the Internet.

Leveraging Nominum’s VantioTM Base Server, Malicious Domain Redirection (MDR) Service Delivery Module, and CentrisTM Threat Aggregation Server, providers can deploy an extremely high performance, accurate, and scalable system to improve safety on the Internet for Australian families while ensuring that network performance and freedom of movement across the internet are preserved for everyone.

“Responsible deployments of intelligent DNS systems can go a long way toward improving the Internet experience for families.” said Tom Tovar, CEO of Nominum.  “Nominum has long led the marketplace with innovations that provide Internet users with a safer, more secure, and productive Internet experience.  Working together with service providers, we can preserve privacy and enhance the Internet experience while protecting Internet users.”  

The Australian government has been investigating ways to improve Internet safety for families for more than a year.  But concerns about adverse impact on Internet performance and potential problems associated with content blocking led to a lengthy debate about technical approaches and rigorous testing to validate conclusions. Nominum's solution has emerged as the only responsible and practical way to meet all of the technical requirements while addressing user concerns about performance and effectiveness of content blocking.

Nominum’s solution can be enhanced through the use of white lists which specify certain sites, such as popular or highly trafficked sites, that should never be blocked.  This same capability also prevents the proxies that are a separate part of the system from being overloaded with traffic, which could reduce performance for Internet users.  Popular and high traffic sites all have formal policies regarding acceptable use which cover content that can be posted.  They also have well established procedures for removing unacceptable content that complement ISP-based filtering systems.

Nominum’s solution for blocking access to child exploitation sites allows service providers to leverage the DNS infrastructure that is already present in every IP network.  Nearly 50 percent of broadband households around the world already rely on Nominum’s DNS for their browsing needs. Virtually every Internet application, including web browsers, relies on the DNS to navigate to destinations on the web.  When a user inadvertently clicks on a link that leads to illegal or malicious content, Nominum’s software can direct them to a “teaching” page, rather than to the unwanted web site.  The key advantage of this solution is that it does not rely on examining the information contained in user’s data packets (“opening the envelope”).  This means there is no possibility of ever invading a user’s privacy.

Another inherent advantage of Nominum’s solution is that it prevents attackers from taking advantage of “fast flux” techniques that allow them to hide their servers by quickly changing IP addresses.  The solution can also be set up to block illegal content such as child exploitation images for all users, while families can optionally select additional services that prevent access to other kinds of content they do not want their children exposed to.   

Extensive independent testing conducted at a major service provider in Australia proved the effectiveness of Nominum’s solution.  The test results clearly show that early concerns about the adverse impact on network performance have been addressed with this new solution.  There was no perceptible degradation in user performance.  Additional concerns about inadvertent blocking of non-targeted content, or failure to block targeted content, have also been addressed.  Filtering was shown to be 100% accurate.  Finally, concerns about inadvertent disclosure of the targeted web sites have been addressed by allowing for management and encryption of a database list of RC-rated content sites by a third party.  The secured list can be transferred to Nominum’s system, where it can be used in encrypted form.  

Details of the testing can be found here: http://exchange.telstra.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/TBT-final-report1.pdf.  

Pricing and Availability

Products used to implement this solution are software only.  The full solution is generally available now and already deployed in production networks. Pricing is configuration dependent.

About Nominum

Nominum’s intelligent network naming and addressing solutions improve IP networks of all sizes globally, from the largest carrier broadband network to enterprises, universities and government agencies.  Leveraging DNS, Nominum’s advanced systems provide enhanced safety, security and navigation assistance to end users.  Nominum’s Domain Name System (DNS) products lead the industry in security, performance, and reliability. They are the foundation of the always-on broadband Internet, supporting 170 million households connected by more than one hundred carriers in every region - North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America.  Large businesses, educational institutions and governmental networks also depend on Nominum to support mission-critical IP services and applications. For details, visit www.nominum.com

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