Top 10 Most Effective Ways to Secure DNS Servers

DNS Basics

All computers on the internet, from smartphones and laptops to servers serving content for massive retail websites, use numbers to find and communicate with one another. These numbers are called IP addresses. When you open a web browser to visit a website, you don't need to remember and enter these long numbers; instead, you can enter a domain name like example.com to connect to the correct location.

DNS services like Amazon Route 53 are globally distributed services that translate human-readable names like www.example.com into numeric IP addresses like 192.0.2.1, which computers use to connect to each other. The internet DNS system works similarly to a phone book, managing the mapping between names and numbers. DNS servers convert name requests into IP addresses to control which server an end-user connects to when they enter a domain name into a web browser. These requests are called queries.

Types of DNS Services

Authoritative DNS Service: Provides an update mechanism for developers to manage their public DNS names and responds to DNS queries by translating domain names into IP addresses. Authoritative DNS holds the ultimate authority for a domain. Amazon Route 53 is an authoritative DNS system.

Recursive DNS: Clients typically do not query authoritative DNS services directly; instead, they connect to resolvers (recursive DNS services). It does not own DNS records but acts as an intermediary to retrieve DNS information; if cached, it responds, otherwise, it forwards the query to an authoritative DNS server.