Before I dive into the integration roadmap, I want to introduce myself. You might know me as the CEO of Zorus, but since the acquisition of Zorus by DNSFilter, I am now the Chief Product Officer at DNSFilter.
Some of you might not know this, but my roots are firmly planted in the MSP world. When I was 19, I helped create LabTech, the RMM tool that many of you now know as ConnectWise Automate. I spent years at ConnectWise, dedicated to its growth and evolution before moving onto Zorus.
Now, at DNSFilter, I’m looking forward to building upon the unique approach to filtering that we pioneered at Zorus.
Here is what that journey will look like in 2025.
Our goal is to bring the best of Zorus and DNSFilter together into a single platform.
With this acquisition, Zorus customers get a resilient and redundant anycast network as well as next-generation threat intelligence. DNSFilter customers get the added capability of DNS PreCheck (as in no DNS changes if you would not like to make them) and CyberSight™: User behavior analytics & business-level analytics.
This unification will not happen overnight, and we are committed to a strategic approach with the best interest of both customer bases in mind.
The following is a breakdown of what we’re targeting in terms of product launch through the end of 2025.
Zorus Network Filtering (ZNS) will use DNSFilter: Zorus customers already have the option to filter via DNS if they’d like to, but we’re working on updating the DNS resolvers already in Zorus to be DNSFilter. This will mean both platforms are unified by the world's fastest dual-anycast network.
DNSFilter Roaming Client Hardening: Prior to the Zorus acquisition, the DNSFilter team has been working on updating the existing Roaming Client. Starting this quarter, we are bringing some of our Zorus technology into the Roaming Client to prepare for both the future migration, and improve stability of the client.
DNS PreCheck for Windows Roaming Clients: DNSFilter customers will begin to take advantage of a hybrid approach to filtering on Windows. DNS PreCheck does not change the resolver, and we know it's incredibly important to own the chain of command of DNS, so you’ll have the choice to make those changes or not based on your business case.
CyberSight™ and Full URL Query Log: This is our user behavioral analytics functionality that will give you additional insight into your users’ activity. Because of the nature of this capability, we’ll be able to release a full URL query log into the DNSFilter product ahead of URL filtering. This will show you a breakdown of URLs, instead of just domains, accessed by your users for all traffic at the browser level. Zorus customers already enjoy this feature because it allows them to conduct better RCA (root cause analysis) after an incident in addition to a range of other use cases.
Unblock Request Management: This feature will be improved, providing a simpler system for processing unblock requests.
Geolocation IP Filtering: This will allow you to understand what country the resolved DNS record is navigating you to, and allow you to block anomalous or suspicious queries based on unexpected IP locations.
CyberSight™ Scheduled Reports: This will allow you to create and schedule reports for CyberSight™, the behavioral analytics feature.
URL + IP Browser Filtering: While we will provide the logs first, customers will have the ability to start filtering malicious URLs at the browser level in Q4. Why does this matter? Think about the URL in the address bar of your browser. A lot of times what happens when a phishing attempt is made, the hacker will try to skip DNS by putting an IP address where the domain would be. This capability allows us to check that and block suspicious URLs and IPs in the browser before a connection is made to better safeguard our customers.
We have a lot more planned past 2025 in regards to the Zorus and DNSFilter integration, but these product updates are absolutely key to our progress. We are committed to remaining transparent during this process, and we will be hosting quarterly product roadmap webinars to discuss our progress.
Before I sign off on my first blog as Chief Product Officer at DNSFilter, I want to address some of the questions we’ve received since the announcement of the acquisition.
Not right away. Our goal is to make any migration seamless and low-effort. We won’t transition until the DNSFilter agent has full parity with the Zorus agent, including features like DNS PreCheck. That planned migration is targeted for 2026, and we’re committed to making it smooth and straightforward.
We’re building a flexible migration path that supports both phased, one-at-a-time transitions, and full migrations. While that process is still in development, we’re prioritizing simplicity and flexibility for all partners.
If you are a Zorus partner today, your agent functionality will not change. The go-forward DNSFilter platform we’re building will be modular. You’ll have the freedom to deploy whatever combination works best for your environment. This means the choice to change your DNS settings or not, just as you always have. For DNSFilter customers, this will be new functionality that we are excited to provide.
Absolutely. We’re keeping the quarterly product roadmap webinars—and now DNSFilter customers get access, too. Transparency into where we’re headed is core to our values.