Security. Privacy. Performance.
Quad9* is a free, recursive, anycast DNS platform that provides end users robust security protections, high-performance, and privacy.
Security: Quad9 blocks against known malicious domains, preventing your computers and IoT devices from connecting to malware or phishing sites. Whenever a Quad9 user clicks on a website link or types in an address into a web browser, Quad9 checks the site against a list of domains combined from 19 different threat intelligence partners. Each threat intelligence partner supplies a list of malicious domains based on their heuristics which examine such factors as scanned malware discovery, network IDS past behaviors, visual object recognition, optical character recognition (OCR), structure and linkages to other sites, and individual reports of suspicious or malicious behavior. Based on the results, Quad9 resolves or denies the lookup attempt, preventing connections to malicious sites when there is a match.
Performance: Quad9 systems are distributed worldwide in more than 145 locations in 88 nations, with 160 locations on deck for 2019. These servers are located primarily at Internet Exchange points, meaning that the distance and time required to get answers is lower than almost any other solution. These systems are distributed worldwide, not just in high-population areas, meaning users in less well-served areas can see significant improvements in speed on DNS lookups. The systems are “anycast” meaning that queries will automatically be routed to the closest operational system.
Privacy: No personally-identifiable information is collected by the system. IP addresses of end users are not stored to disk or distributed outside of the equipment answering the query in the local data center. Quad9 is a not-for-profit organization dedicated only to the operation of DNS services. There are no other secondary revenue streams for personally-identifiable data, and the core charter of the organization is to provide secure, fast, private DNS.
* CleanerDNS (dba Quad9) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Free
Open
Private
As the project is refined and more capacity added to the infrastructure, there will be additional cities added worldwide to provide one of the widest geographic and network-topology overlays, providing maximum performance and fault resiliency.
The service exists to provide a more secure Internet for everyone. The three primary founding collaborators for the project have goals that are similar.
About IBM
IBM Security offers one of the most advanced and integrated portfolios of enterprise security products and services. The portfolio, supported by world-renowned IBM X-Force® research, enables organizations to effectively manage risk and defend against emerging threats. IBM operates one of the world’s broadest security research, development and delivery organizations, monitors 35 billion security events per day in more than 130 countries, and holds more than 3,000 security patents.
For more information, please visit www.ibm.com/security, follow @IBMSecurity on Twitter or visit the IBM Security Intelligence blog.
Additionally, IBM transferred to the project the easy-to-remember “9.9.9.9” address, which makes remembering Quad9 easy for everyone!
About Packet Clearing House
PCH operates a large portion of the world’s authoritative DNS, and is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the stability, security, and interconnectedness of the Internet. PCH has provided the networking infrastructure that allows Quad9 to have a worldwide presence.
Learn more at: https://www.pch.net
About Global Cyber Alliance
The Global Cyber Alliance (GCA) is an international, cross-sector effort dedicated to confronting systemic cyber risk and improving our connected world. We are a catalyst to bring communities of interest and affiliations together in an environment that sparks innovation with concrete, measurable achievements.
Learn more at:
https://www.globalcyberalliance.org
Quad9 has integrated both commercial and publicly available threat intelligence feeds based upon their proven capability to identify threat actors and provide a broad array of capabilities to identify exploits, malware, and ransomware, including those listed below. In addition to the collaboration with IBM and intelligence from the IBM X-Force research team, we continue to build new partnerships with threat intelligence providers to improve the service. All of these partners below are combined into the threat mitigation feed, giving Quad9 a wide and rapid response to Internet risks as they emerge.
