When providing DNS nameserver services a degree of redundancy is needed. In most cases the DNS records for a particular domain will be hosted by at least two nameservers, but is that enough by itself?

When building a resilient system the risks involved with the failure modes of the system need to be considered and weighed up against the associated costs and overheads. As a common example - does having both DNS servers on the same local network segment provide you with protection against network failure? Probably not.

These statistics only relate to information collated by Janet CSIRT and do not provide an accurate sample of security activity across the research and education sectors. The figures are frequently more closely correlated to the activity of CSIRT and our detection of events rather than their actual rates of incidence.

For example: a successful investigation by researchers into a botnet will cause that month's malware figures to rise even though the malware may have been active in previous months.

As you may now be aware, the FBI and NCA are coordinating 'global day of action' against the Zeus-P2p and Cryptolocker families of malware. Law enforcement and industry partners will be collaborating to interrupt infrastructure vital to the malware's operation and to raise public awareness of these threats.

Thanks to the generosity of my host, AusCERT, I’ve been able to spend this week in Queensland at AusCERT’s annual conference. Whilst not part of the Australian NREN AARNet, AusCERT fulfils a similar role to Janet CSIRT and provides incident response services to the Higher Education sector in Australia.