Once considered mere plumbing of the internet, DNS has become a favored battleground for modern cyber adversaries. This transformation is not theoretical: it is already playing out across enterprise environments where DNS traffic often remains unmonitored, misunderstood, and dangerously under protected.
Without visibility into DNS traffic, organizations are left blind to some of the most stealthy and persistent threats in today’s cyber landscape - from covert command-and-control channels and data exfiltration, to AI-generated domain abuse that easily evades traditional defenses like firewalls, EDR, and legacy SIEMs.
DNS: From Background Protocol to Prime Attack Surface
Every digital activity - sending an email, browsing a website, initiating a connection - begins with a DNS request. This ubiquity makes DNS an incredibly valuable target for attackers, and a powerful vantage point for defenders, if visibility exists.
In recent years, adversaries have industrialized DNS abuse. For example:
- AI-generated domains are increasingly used to launch phishing campaigns or sustain malware infrastructure with dynamic, ever-changing addresses that bypass blocklists.
- DNS tunneling allows attackers to stealthily siphon data or communicate with infected devices using what appears to be normal DNS traffic.
- Malware embedded in DNS TXT records, a tactic first uncovered in prior research and still prevalent in 2025, turns DNS into a delivery mechanism — not just a communications channel.
Yet most security teams don’t inspect DNS traffic in real time, leaving these threats to operate undetected until significant damage is done.
Proof from the Field: DNS Threats at Scale
Recent data paints a clear picture of DNS as a core threat vector:
- The Infoblox DNS Threat Landscape Report (2025) revealed more than 100 million newly registered domains in one year alone — with 1 in 4 classified as malicious or suspicious. This isn’t just a trend; it’s an industrial-scale exploitation of DNS.
- Researchers at DomainTools highlighted how malicious payloads are now being embedded directly into DNS records meant for legitimate functions, such as email authentication. This repurposing of trusted mechanisms exposes a critical gap in traditional defense models.
Case in point: In 2024, a global logistics firm suffered data exfiltration via DNS tunneling for six months before detection, costing them regulatory fines under GDPR and a sharp drop in customer trust.
The Cost of Invisibility: Business, Compliance and Operational Risk
Failing to monitor DNS traffic doesn’t just hinder technical defenses, it creates strategic vulnerabilities:
- Operational continuity: Malware using DNS as a command channel can quietly propagate, triggering outages or ransomware events that disrupt services and supply chains.
- Regulatory non-compliance: Frameworks like NIS2, GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS demand oversight of data flows. DNS exfiltration that goes undetected could mean non-compliance - and penalties.
- Financial and reputational damage: DNS-based intrusions often serve as the opening act for ransomware, credential theft, and third-party compromise.
- SOC performance degradation: Security teams already struggling with alert fatigue and low signal-to-noise ratios are left flying blind without DNS context - increasing dwell time and incident cost.
DNS invisibility is not just an oversight, it undermines resilience at every level: operational, regulatory and strategic.
Visibility (Telemetry): The Dividing Line Between Compromise and Control
DNS visibility is not about collecting more data for data’s sake: it’s about regaining control.
With proper DNS monitoring:
- SOC analysts can detect and contain threats earlier.
- Executives gain confidence in compliance posture.
- DNS becomes a source of actionable intelligence — not a hidden liability.
On the other hand, a lack of DNS visibility leaves an open door for adversaries to exploit. This is why organizations must embed DNS as a core component of their Threat Detection, Investigation, and Response (TDIR) strategy.
How to Build Resilience with DNS Security
To defend against modern DNS-based attacks, organizations need more than passive logging - they need an integrated, intelligent defense. Effective DNS security requires:
- Real-time monitoring: Block threats before they resolve, rather than retroactively investigate.
- AI-powered anomaly detection: Identify tunneling, beaconing, domain-flux and suspicious query patterns.
- SIEM/SOAR integration: Enrich alerts with DNS telemetry for contextual response and automation.
- Cloud-native scalability: Support modern, distributed workforces and hybrid infrastructure.
- Threat intelligence enrichment: Map DNS data to threat actor infrastructure and campaigns.
Organizations that integrate DNS security into their detection stack see faster threat detection, improved compliance posture, and reduced business risk.
A Strategic Control Point: ClearSkies™ DNS Shield
At Odyssey, we recognized that DNS had become the new soft underbelly of enterprise defense and built ClearSkies™ DNS Shield to address this head-on.
Our cloud-native DNS security solution delivers:
- Full visibility across all DNS activity, users, and devices.
- AI-powered detection of both known and unknown threats.
- Real-time blocking of malicious and AI-generated domains.
- Seamless integration into your existing TDIR workflows.
- Compliance support through secure DNS logging and reporting.
With ClearSkies™ DNS Shield, DNS is no longer a weak point. It becomes a strategic asset, giving your security team control, continuity, and clarity.
The Bottom Line
In the AI era, DNS is no longer passive infrastructure, it is a primary battleground.
If you can’t see DNS traffic, your adversaries already can.
Visibility into DNS traffic is no longer optional. It is the foundation of cyber resilience.
