You may recently have read about changes being made to how internet browsers work – the headline is that depending on how you manage your school web traffic and filtering, you may no longer be able to block potentially harmful content.
Until now when you search for a website you type in a domain name, like www.myschool.com, and information systems within the internet translate that into an IP address which allows them to connect you to the website you’re looking for. That DNS request is currently unencrypted, which means if someone has hijacked the service which translates your domain name request they can potentially redirect you to the IP address of a harmful website. The new system being implement, called DNS over HTTPS or DoH, encrypts that request. This reduces the security risks, particularly of fraudsters trying to divert you to a risky site.
The challenge for schools is that this encryption can make it impossible for some filtering and monitoring solutions to work. If you can’t monitor and filter web traffic, how can you identify risks of online harm? The good news is that RM SafetyNet is not affected by these changes – your filtering and monitoring services will continue to be effective regardless of whether your browser is using standard DNS or DoH.