Explore these example use cases to learn some of the top ways our customers use DNSFilter reporting to manage their accounts. 

It all starts with Insights

Reporting Insights is a hub to watch the health of your network. Monitor top activity, usage, or isolate activity to determine if your policies need a refresh to keep your organization secure.

Though most of these tips start here, we'd be remiss not to mention the DNS Query Log: it tracks all DNS traffic and offers a lot of filtering options, plus the ability to update DNSFilter policies right from the log and export data. If you're not spending much time there, we highly recommend giving it a look. 

Now on to the tips. 👀

⚡️ Troubleshooting Site deployments. Check DNS Forwarding deployments by viewing Top Active Sites and the live Active Sites. You'll quickly see if a Site isn't receiving traffic and be able to look into possible causes.

Top Active Sites span the top of Reporting Insights, and you can see the live Active Sites by scrolling down to the bottom of the page.

⚡️ Pin Point threat sources. Threat traffic can be useful for end-user education or locating infected Roaming Clients. 

From Insights, scroll to All threats by domain and use the drop down menu to select Roaming Client or Users. Filter by Threats to capture the Roaming Clients or Users producing blocked traffic. 

You can also select the Roaming Client/User name to view all domain requests from that source. See details like the user that made the request, filtering policy, and IP address by selecting the more arrow next to the request.

• ✍️ Some firewall's have reporting capabilities that can offer device-specific data. This information can help admins that only deploy DNS Forwarding, like educators, to find threat sources. Consult your firewall manufacturer's documentation for details. 

⚡️ Monitor time-wasting traffic. Filter by category to see the most queried types of websites, which can help determine if any updates are necessary to keep the organization on task. 

E.g. if anyone beyond your Marketing team is spending most their time in Social Networking-categorized websites, it might be worth reassessing your policies to block more access. 

From Insights, scroll to All threats by domain and use the drop down menu to select Category. Confirm your top categories match the type of traffic your organization should create or see that some filtering policy adjustments could benefit productivity.

⚡️ Cleanup inactive users. A quick way to see that your user count is accurate is through Insights reporting. This same process works for inactive Roaming Clients as well. 

1. Toggle the date range to Last 30/60/90 days 
2. Scroll to All threats by domain and use the drop down menu to select Users
3. Check the list for any Users without traffic
   • Note them or open the DNSFilter in a second tab 
4. Navigate to Deployments and select Users
5. Select delete to remove the inactive user

Check this new total against your payment plan and average usage to confirm your billing is accurate.  

⚡️ Allow/Block an Application. Update AppAware filtering policies without leaving the AppAware tab. Just like finding threat sources above, drill down to the app's User or Roaming Client traffic to isolate what devices unwanted traffic originates from.  

⚡️ Export threat data from a specific time frame. Sometimes you just need a different data set than the Scheduled Report or DNS Query Log provides, or maybe your org isn't taking advantage of our data export feature. This is where Data Explorer comes in. Filter by the attributes that matter most and export the data via PDF or CSV file. 

⚡️ Export data at a regular cadence. Much like isolating data to a specific time frame, exporting the data you want at a regular cadence is vital because DNSFilter doesn't store data indefinitely. Most customers opt to use our data export feature to automate the process, but if that's not right for you, grab what you need from Scheduled Reports, the DNS Query Log, or Data Explorer dashboard. 

Have you discovered other vantages to Insights? Share them below!