OpenDNS, a provider of Internet security and DNS services, announced that Ringgold Telephone, a communications provider delivering telephone, Internet and communications services to North Georgia, has selected OpenDNS Enterprise to prevent malware and other Internet threats.

The progressive communications provider leverages OpenDNS Enterprise's unique malware protection and flexible Web filtering to protect its internal employees and company assets from malware and botnets, officials at OpenDNS said.

Ringgold Telephone selected OpenDNS to replace a Sonicwall product it was using to block malware. The selective filtering employed by Sonicwall was inflexible, and its limitations allowed malware to penetrate the network, requiring costly and time-intensive cleanup and putting the network at risk, company officials said. The software also did not help the company provide custom access for different employees, which was disruptive to productivity.

OpenDNS Enterprise provided them with all the essential functionality the communications provider required to ensure smooth flow of its processes. OpenDNS delivered the communications provider a unique malware-prevention technology that would allow their IT team to ensure that Internet threats could be stopped before they ever became a problem.

"We were experiencing a significant amount of malware on our network and it became abundantly clear that we needed to implement additional security measures, including custom filtering," said Todd Nelson, ISP manager for Ringgold Telephone, in a statement. "We wanted to be able to comprehensively block malware, specifically through blacklisting malicious sites, but still give administrators the access they needed."

In addition to malware protection, OpenDNS Enterprise also offered Ringgold Telephone remote management functionality. The service gives the communications provider the ability to manage settings, observe network stats and logs and modify privileges from a single Web-based Dashboard.

OpenDNS Enterprise is different from other malware solutions in the market. Instead of running software on individual machines that searches for existing malware, OpenDNS Enterprise prevents requests to malicious sites from ever happening, keeping our network clean and personal information safe.

Earlier in October, OpenDNS announced that its service is now present on a full half of all U.S. college and university campus networks. Additionally, over the last six months the company prevented the visit to 2.5 million malware, phishing and bot related sites, company officials said.