More than 20,000 U.S. Schools, Including Largest School Districts, Now Using OpenDNS's Free Web Security Solution

OpenDNS Reports Unprecedented Adoption in K-12 Schools in United States

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) November 21, 2008 -- OpenDNS, the award-winning navigation service that makes the Internet safer, faster, smarter and more reliable, today announced more than 20,000 kindergarten through twelfth-grade schools and school districts in the United States have switched to the free Internet security service to keep students and staff safe online. OpenDNS, the world's largest and fastest-growing DNS provider, additionally reports that among the 20,000 schools are some of the nation's largest school districts.

Faced with IT budget cuts, schools and school districts across the country are switching to OpenDNS after finding the free solution better meets their needs than pricy appliance-based filtering systems. OpenDNS, which works in the cloud and requires no hardware to purchase, deploy and maintain, helps schools easily achieve the necessary Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) compliance to become eligible for government IT aid by providing more than 50 categories of content for Web filtering, including industry-leading anti-phishing. The IT budget freed up by switching to OpenDNS is often applied to much needed education technology purchases, which are otherwise unaffordable.

Further driving the adoption of OpenDNS among schools is mounting concern about proxies and anonymizers, tools students often use to bypass traditional Web filters. Because of OpenDNS's innovative community-powered approach to Web filtering, the service recognizes and blocks new proxies and anonymizers significantly faster than other security solutions, and in effect, makes Web filtering more insurmountable.

To date, OpenDNS has provided 100 percent uptime to its 20,000 school and school district users, and verified and blocked more than a quarter-million unique phishing scams.

"OpenDNS provides an invaluable service that assists schools regarding CIPA compliance and safe Internet surfing. It also cuts down on SSL proxy site utilization," said Gavin Guynes, Director of Technology for Madison County Schools in Mississippi. "While over 20,000 schools and districts are using the service now, I see no reason why all school districts should not use the service."

"Schools in general are hard pressed for funding, and OpenDNS allowed us to save a significant amount of money, while eliminating problems like proxies on our network," said Randy Gross, Director of Technology for Dowagiac Union Schools in Michigan. "OpenDNS is a fantastic service that is perfect for school districts. It comes as no surprise that 20,000 U.S. schools and school districts have make the switch to the service for Web filtering and security."

"The adoption we continue to see in the education space is exceptional, and for good reason. Our schools are backed into a corner - mandated by the government to adhere to filtering standards, yet hit with significant budget cuts that make filtering solutions account for the bulk of their IT spend," said OpenDNS Founder David Ulevitch. "OpenDNS is perfect for schools and school districts because it meets their security needs at a pricepoint they can afford - free. We expect the adoption of OpenDNS in this space to continue to ramp up, and encourage all schools to try OpenDNS on their networks at zero risk."

About OpenDNS

OpenDNS is the world's largest and fastest-growing DNS provider, making the Internet safer, faster, smarter and more reliable for millions of people around the world. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company operates a new kind of recursive Domain Name System (DNS) service that enables the delivery of services like Web content filtering and industry-leading phishing protection through the DNS, free and without requiring users to download or install software. OpenDNS is thoroughly committed to operating the best DNS platform in the world and to improving the Internet. For more information about OpenDNS, please visit: http://www.opendns.com

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