Our post on Five Suggestions To Reduce Your Digital Risk generated quite a bit of attention in social media. Thanks as always for sharing things we write. Clearly for many of you this one seemed to be something you wanted friends and family to see and we appreciate that.

The post also generated a common question/suggestion. Many of you asked which DNS services should be considered. There are many good options and at first glance it can be hard to decide which is most relevant. This post provides a bit of context on what we believe to be the four best, and recommends one above the others.

The four best options for your managed DNS service are: Google Public DNS, OpenDNS, GlobalCyberAlliance, and Verisign DNS.

Google Public DNS: Google is doing a great service for the world with this free DNS resolution service. This will speed up your browsing, improve your security, and get you results with no redirection. But guess what? They get something out of it too. They get data.

OpenDNS: Now part of Cisco, this firm was early in the home user market and is now growing among Cisco clients. Free and very low cost options for home users. Makes browsing faster and more secure. If you want malware protection you have to add $20.00 per user and add software on your roaming devices.

Global Cyber Alliance: The Global Cyber Alliance (GCA), in partnership with Packet Clearing House (PCH) and a consortium of industry and non-profit contributors, is building a global anycast open recursive privacy-enabled DNS infrastructure. This reduces risk, speeds browsing, and since it is being fielded by a non-profit there is no collection of personally identifiable information like some other providers. It is in a pilot status. Contact GCA for more info.

Verisign: Verisign Public DNS is a free DNS service that offers improved DNS stability and security over other alternatives. Verisign respects privacy. DNS data and other PII is not sold or shared or used to serve you ads.

Our recommendation, for home and business, is Verisign. Home users will get the speed and enhanced security you need. And it is backed up by the same talent that keeps the entire .com and .net and .gov DNS infrastructure up and running.  Business users can start for free and then easily add on other managed services.