DNS filtering designed for academic medical centers and research institutions. Protect research data integrity, ensure IRB compliance, secure collaborative networks, and shield patient data used in research from web-based risks.
Medical research institutions operate at the intersection of healthcare, academia, and cutting-edge science. Their networks must simultaneously support open academic collaboration, protect patient data used in research, and defend federally funded projects from theft -- competing priorities that generic security solutions cannot reconcile.
Research environments demand unrestricted access to global databases, collaboration platforms, and scientific resources. Traditional restrictive filtering disrupts legitimate research activities. Our solution understands the difference between essential scientific resources and genuine content risks.
Medical research institutions face a unique web landscape. State-sponsored groups target NIH-funded research, academic espionage campaigns seek unpublished findings, and restricted content groups know that research institutions will pay to recover irreplaceable longitudinal study data that cannot be recreated.
Our 90-million-domain database includes specific categorization for content risks targeting academic and medical research: fake journal submission portals designed to steal manuscripts, fraudulent grant application sites, compromised research collaboration platforms, and domains used in academic credential restricted content campaigns.
We maintain allowlists for legitimate scientific databases (PubMed, ClinicalTrials.gov, GenBank, WHO resources) and research collaboration tools, ensuring that DNS filtering enhances security without creating friction for researchers accessing the resources they depend on daily.
Balancing open scientific collaboration with rigorous data protection
Years of longitudinal study data, genomic sequences, and clinical observations represent irreplaceable scientific value. A single restricted content attack can destroy decades of research, and data manipulation by bad actors can invalidate published findings and damage institutional credibility.
Research protocols involving patient data carry dual compliance obligations under HIPAA and the Common Rule. DNS filtering must prevent unauthorized access to research databases containing PHI while allowing legitimate researcher access to approved data repositories and analysis platforms.
Modern medical research involves extensive collaboration across institutions, countries, and disciplines. Shared data environments, federated databases, and collaborative computing resources create complex trust relationships where a compromised partner institution can content risken your entire research network.
NIH, NSF, and DoD grants increasingly mandate specific cybersecurity controls for research data. Failure to demonstrate adequate data protection can result in grant termination, repayment obligations, and exclusion from future federal funding -- a catastrophic outcome for research institutions.
Research institutions value open networks and unrestricted information access. Researchers resist security controls they perceive as barriers to productivity. DNS filtering must be transparent enough to avoid disrupting legitimate work while still blocking genuine content risks to research data.
Researchers, visiting scholars, and graduate students bring personal devices onto institutional networks. These unmanaged endpoints create DNS resolution paths outside institutional control, requiring network-level DNS filtering that protects regardless of device management status.
Purpose-built for the unique demands of research environments
Create distinct DNS filtering zones for clinical research, basic science, administrative, and guest networks. Each zone gets tailored policies matching its data sensitivity and access requirements.
Pre-built allowlists covering 50,000+ legitimate scientific databases, journals, genomic repositories, and research tools. Researchers access the resources they need without triggering false positives.
Generate data protection reports for IRB submissions demonstrating network-level controls protecting human subjects data. Automated evidence collection for protocol renewals and audits.
Securely enable cross-institutional research by managing DNS-level access to shared data platforms. Partner institutions get filtered access to collaborative resources without exposing internal research networks.
Detect and block DNS-based exfiltration of research data, genomic sequences, and clinical datasets. Identify unusual query patterns that indicate unauthorized data transfer from research networks.
Tamper-proof logging aligned with federal grant cybersecurity requirements. Demonstrate continuous compliance with NIST 800-171 controls for CUI protection in research environments.
Protecting research institutions while enabling scientific discovery
A major academic medical center deployed DNS filtering across their genomic research division to protect whole-genome sequencing data. The system identified DNS tunneling attempts from a compromised bioinformatics workstation that was exfiltrating patient genomic data through encoded DNS queries, blocking the breach before any data left the network.
A research consortium conducting a 50-site clinical trial implemented unified DNS filtering across all participating institutions. The consistent policy layer prevented unsafe content access targeting research coordinators at smaller sites that lacked dedicated security teams, protecting the trial's data integrity across the entire participant network.
A university research hospital used DNS filtering to meet new NIH cybersecurity requirements for grant-funded projects. The solution provided the controlled access, continuous monitoring, and audit trail documentation needed to satisfy grant compliance reviews, preventing potential funding clawbacks totaling $30 million across active grants.
An international research institute hosts 200+ visiting scholars annually from institutions worldwide. DNS filtering on the guest research network blocks unsafe content domains that visiting researchers may bring from less-secured home institutions, preventing cross-contamination while enabling full access to approved scientific resources.
Deploy DNS filtering that protects research data while enabling the open collaboration science demands
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