BlueCat Edge Reviews

We have Edge deployed at roughly forty locations and use it as the primary DNS server for all our locations. Each location points to an Edge instance, which then points back to the Integrity instance.

Edge has reduced the complexity and has been more reliable. We replaced one infrastructure with the BlueCat infrastructure which has offered marginal cost savings without increasing costs.

We have deployed BlueCat Edge across our organization globally. Regional-based queries are directed to BlueCat Edge, and they are resolved within the regions themselves. For instance, we have an Anycast setup with a single IP assigned to specific regions, allowing queries to be resolved efficiently without needing to reach out to different locations.

The namespace and access control features are notable. The caching parameter resolves challenges effectively. Another valuable aspect is the conditional forwarding based on region and IP. BlueCat is doing a good job with DNS threats detection and identifying malicious queries. 

We can track where queries are coming from, especially in DDoS attacks. The security dashboard and discovery features are useful. Additionally, there has been a significant cost reduction with BlueCat Cloud DNS handling external solutions.

We are utilizing it as DNS traffic management and security solution. This way, we can capture and utilize BlueCat's cloud AI solution to find malicious DNS requests, get them over to us, and take corrective actions on those.

BlueCat Edge’s ability to detect DNS threats and identify malicious queries comes in quite handy. We can keep track of the low or minor things. It has even helped us track down misconfiguration, which was great. We have had some situations where we had to take corrective action on malicious intent going outward. For example, we had a particular machine going to a malicious site at 2 AM, and we had to take that proactive or automatic action to stop it from going there. We can deny them the ability to even connect. A lot of companies use what is called web content filtering. They want to prevent you from going to certain websites. For example, on your work machine, you want to go to playboy.com. Your machine makes the DNS call, gets the IP address, and attempts to make that connection to that website. The web content filtering at that point will jump in and say, "Hey. You are trying to go somewhere that you are not supposed to be going to." It blocks you. It happens very fast. When you make the DNS request to find out where playboy.com is located, before you even get the DNS response to try and connect to the site, you are blocked. It happens at a level much faster than web content filtering because in some cases, when you try to connect, you might even get a payload that comes down to you before your web content filtering kicks in.

BlueCat Edge offers provider-agnostic DNS discovery and resolution across multiple cloud environments. We are using it because routing DNS traffic is critical to the operations of our business. We have the ability to define rule sets and be able to say that this traffic is destined for Cloud A and then we are going to forward that over there. When a request comes in for Cloud B, we are going to set it over there. If a request is for something on-prem in our data center, it is going to get routed over there. I love that ability of BlueCat Edge. It has made our life very easy.

We use the Security Dashboard, and we have the ability to see situations happening realtime. We also have CrowdStrike threat protection features turned on, so we get to see other issues flowing as realtime can get. We have DGA and top-level DTLD that you are not supposed to go to. We could have that visibility at a finite level, which is great. This visibility from the Security Dashboard has helped save time when not only troubleshooting but also with any configuration issues. If there is a configuration issue, we have to go look and figure out a fix for that configuration issue that we may have created accidentally.

In terms of securing our infrastructure from end to end so that we can detect and remediate threats, we do get the flags that are thrown as soon as something comes up from something within our internal network. The DNS queries are immediately dumped to our SIEM solution in our security team's purview where they could immediately take action. We also have some of the automations turned on to generate emergency tickets to the appropriate team. It makes life so much easier.

BlueCat Edge has probably reduced our threat risk by 68%.

In our network, BlueCat Edge acts as the central point of contact for all DNS requests. It essentially functions like a DNS resolver, directing our internal devices to the correct resources. This makes BlueCat Edge the first stop for all DNS traffic within our organization.

While BlueCat Edge can identify DNS threats like typos, tunneling, and DDA, for our specific needs we use Cisco Umbrella to analyze all our external DNS traffic. This integration between the two platforms sends all external queries to Umbrella, though BlueCat Edge still offers valuable security insights through its reporting.

Our company currently leverages BlueCat Edge, within Microsoft Azure. This flexibility allows us to deploy BlueCat Edge not only across our on-premise data centers but also within Azure. This approach ensures consistent functionality regardless of the deployment environment, and future integrations with cloud providers offering a single pane of glass with any Cloud vendor.

While the full security features of BlueCat Edge might take time to assess, the benefits in data visibility and flexibility were immediate. We gained instant traffic visibility, which was incredibly helpful. For example, troubleshooting with internal server management teams became much smoother - I could simply share my screen and show them their traffic data, leaving them impressed with the newfound transparency.

Since implementing BlueCat Edge, we've observed a reduction in viruses, ransomware phishing, and malware attacks. The increased visibility it provides allows us to target and address specific threats within our environment. We've also seen a decrease in DNS-related issues.

By centralizing management with BlueCat Edge's flexible solution, our company has reduced operational expenses. Easy deployment across our global footprint and improved visibility through centralized logging allow for faster troubleshooting and resolution of DNS issues. Additionally, the enhanced security features help to minimize problems and improve overall network health.

We primarily use BlueCat Edge for our entire internal infrastructure and all internal clients for all DNS resolution needs. We also leverage it for DNS redirects, integrations between cloud and on-premises providers, and as a sorting engine to direct queries to the appropriate internal DNS infrastructure. This is necessary because we have multiple internal infrastructures for resolving internal system queries.

We implemented BlueCat Edge to solve the visibility and security issues we were having.

Our infrastructure, including both Edge and BlueCat components, utilizes a full hybrid cloud and on-premises model.

We encountered some malicious queries, and BlueCat Edge proved invaluable in detecting these DNS threats. While currently only operating in monitor mode, its biggest benefit has become its instrumental role in diagnosing performance issues. It serves as a crucial troubleshooting toolset within our infrastructure, helping us identify and resolve outages effectively.

BlueCat Edge's ability to provide agnostic DNS discovery and resolution across multiple cloud environments is fantastic. I even use it for various DNS providers, including Active Directory, F5, Route 53, and GCP. This capability makes it a key component for me, as it allows me to seamlessly navigate the same DNS namespace across different infrastructures, something that I've found only BlueCat can offer.

The main benefits of BlueCat Edge are its improved performance over our previous infrastructure and its large cache management capabilities. Both contribute to exceptional performance gains. Additionally, it provides valuable visibility into DNS activity, revealing which clients are making what queries and enabling detailed investigation. As we migrated more of our infrastructure onto BlueCat, beyond just the Edge product, we observed immediate benefits in terms of visibility. The biggest hurdle we faced was redirecting our internal clients to use Edge over existing internal DNS solutions. This initially slowed down our metrics, but we still had access to the data. As more systems started using Edge, the benefits became increasingly apparent.

BlueCat Edge has helped our organization reduce operational expenses by decreasing our downtime and providing better DNS performance for queries, as well as helping us identify misconfigurations within our clients' networks.

It's our DNS server. We have thousands of users. We're a university with over 70,000 students. The medical school alone has roughly eight to ten thousand users. 

It's always good to have something on the window, right in front of you instead of recording on your subnets, routers, and devices. It's also easy to set up and configure, too.

We use BlueCat Edge, but we have mostly been using the IPAM portion of it where we just manage the IPs and so on.

It helps you to maintain the IPs of your end devices, such as your routers, and it also allows you to keep track of the IPs that are assigned versus what you still have in store. You can reclaim some of those IPs. That's about it for me with the IPAM portion I've looked at.

From the corporate standpoint, it helps you to have an idea of what IPs are out there, where an IP is, and keep a check on the subnet usage and things like that.