How Infoblox uses its own DNS Forward Proxy to ensure consistent, centralized protection of on-premises DNS traffic across the enterprise
What Problem Are We Solving?
Organizations often struggle to ensure that DNS queries originating from on-premises environments are consistently routed through security services such as Infoblox Threat Defense™. Without a standardized approach, gaps in coverage emerge, resulting in inconsistent protection and limited visibility across the network.
Why DNS Forward Proxy Is the Right Control Point
Infoblox Threat Defense provides centralized policy enforcement at the DNS layer. To extend this protection to on-premises environments, Infoblox deploys the DNS Forward Proxy (DFP), a recursive DNS service that intercepts client queries and forwards them to the Infoblox Platform for inspection before a response is returned. Because DFP sits in the path of every DNS request, it serves as an effective and reliable enforcement point across the enterprise.
How We Implement It
- DFP Deployment: DFP is deployed on on-premises NIOS-X and NIOS appliances, functioning as the primary DNS handler for all on-premises clients.
- Centralized Management and Policy Enforcement: All DFP instances are centrally managed and associated with the organization’s security policies through the Infoblox Platform.
- Cloud Integration: The solution integrates seamlessly with existing cloud-based Infoblox services (NIOS-X as a Service), providing a unified hybrid architecture.
Policy Enforcement in Practice
When a DNS client sends a query, DFP intercepts it and forwards it to the Infoblox Platform. The platform evaluates the request against configured security policies and returns a response through DFP to the client. This ensures that every DNS transaction, regardless of origin, is subject to centralized inspection and threat intelligence.
You can read more about how we use the same security policy company-wide to control AI access here.
Because DFP is deployed alongside DNS services on each name server, fallback configuration is not required under normal operating conditions. In the event of a brief connectivity interruption between DFP and the cloud platform, clients may experience temporary SERVFAIL responses for non-authoritative domains while DFP determines connectivity status. Local DNS services continue to resolve authoritative queries as designed, minimizing disruption while maintaining security integrity.
Key Takeaway
Infoblox actively uses DNS Forward Proxy within its own environment to ensure that all on-premises DNS traffic is protected, inspected and governed by centralized security policies. This internal deployment demonstrates how organizations can eliminate coverage gaps, gain a single pane of glass for monitoring and policy enforcement, and significantly reduce misconfiguration risk—all while maintaining operational simplicity across hybrid networks.
Optional: Fallback Design
For environments requiring additional resiliency, DFP fallback can be configured to a secondary DNS security service or an internal DNS server outside the DFP framework. Note that using public DNS resolvers (e.g., 8.8.8.8) as a fallback may prevent successful resolution of internal domains and is generally not recommended.
