So, by now you’ve realized that you really should provide some content filtering of your Internet connection. A reasonable first-step is to configure your connection so that you are using OpenDNS as your DNS service. It is very simple to start using OpenDNS…
If you are serving DCHP to your internal network from a router, you should simply change the DNS entries from what is supplied by your ISP to the OpenDNS addresses – 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. This simple configuration change is all that is required for most home, and many small business networks.
If your network is configured for split-DNS, then you should configure the internal DNS server so that it forwards to the OpenDNS addresses for external resolution.
To gain the greatest advantage from using OpenDNS, you need to create an account that is linked to the IP address of your network. Most often this is the IP address of the external interface of the router. OpenDNS is located at www.opendns.com. Select Start using it now… and you are allowed to create your account and specify your IP address to OpenDNS.
Once the account is created, go to the Settings tab. You will see the screen where you have the option to select the filtering level. The filtering levels are defined as:
- High – Protects against all adult-relates sites, illegal activity, social networking sites, and general time-wasters.
- Moderate – Protects against all adult-related sites and illegal activity.
- Low – Protects against pornography and phishing.
- Minimal – Protects against phishing attacks.
- None – Nothing blocked.
- Custom – Choose the categories you want to block.
Apply the settings and your network will be using OpenDNS for Internet content filtering.
Customization of the filtering level is allowed. You can whitelist certain domains so that they are never blocked. Likewise, you can blacklist certain domains so that they are always blocked.
Obviously, your network may be more complex than what is presented above. If you don’t have someone available who knows how to properly configure DNS, the OpenDNS folks have several help documents ready for you to read.
That’s about all that is required. I hope that it works well for your organization.
- Dan
