OpenDNS Announces New 'People-Powered Security' Platform, Adds More Than 30 Additional Block Categories

February 20, 2008; 04:22 AM

San Francisco (PRWEB) February 20, 2008 -- OpenDNS, the award-winning DNS service that makes the Internet safer, faster, smarter and more reliable, today announced a new Web content filtering platform that adds more than 30 Web site categories users can block through an OpenDNS account. The platform, making OpenDNS filtering far superior to any other filtering tool available today, provides network administrators the option to use "People-Powered Security" instead of being limited to the single option of paying top dollar for a Web content filtering tool. Now providing DNS service to more than 3 million Internet users worldwide, OpenDNS is the world's largest, fastest-growing DNS service.

Similar to the way PhishTank.com works, the new OpenDNS platform uses the intelligence of the community to perform a security function. Community members submit domains into the system and tag them with a category such as "gambling," "hate," "video sharing" or "social networking." Other community members vote on the accuracy of the submitter's tag. There is a trust metric built into the system so the more a community member votes and the more accurate their votes are the more weight they carry. Once a tagged domain crosses a predetermined threshold, it will be added into that category in the OpenDNS system.

OpenDNS Web content filtering is far superior to all other filtering tools for three main reasons:

1. It is more comprehensive. The system has tens of thousands of people submitting and verifying the accuracy of Web sites' inclusion in categories. This is in stark contrast to a mere handful of people employed for this job by security companies offering Web content filtering.

2. It is faster moving. New Web sites and changes to existing Web sites are constantly being published to the Internet. Other Web content filtering tools update only once nightly, or even less frequently, and therefore fail to catch and categorize everything right away. OpenDNS has the advantage of tens of thousands of people adding and tagging sites at any given time, so users benefit from real-time updates.

3. It is free to use. No longer are businesses, organizations and schools forced to pay top dollar to security companies simply to protect their networks.

"Network administrators have been at the mercy of security companies for too long, being forced to pay thousands -- if not hundreds of thousands -- in licensing fees just to keep their network secure from unsafe or inappropriate sites," said OpenDNS CEO David Ulevitch. "The new domain tagging platform makes OpenDNS the absolute easiest way to filter Web content on your network. People-Powered Security is hands down the best approach and there is no reason any network administrator would not use OpenDNS."

The new categories are in addition to pre-existing phishing and adult categories filterable with an OpenDNS account. OpenDNS's industry leading phishing protection is powered by PhishTank.com and adult site blocking is powered by St. Bernard Software.

About OpenDNS
OpenDNS makes the Internet safer, faster, smarter and more reliable. Based in San Francisco, the company operates a large distributed network that powers a new kind of recursive DNS (Domain Name System) service that provides all Internet users increased security, reliability and performance. OpenDNS is thoroughly committed to building and operating the best DNS platform in the world and to improving the Internet. For more information about OpenDNS, please visit: http://www.opendns.com

Source: www.prweb.com