As cybersecurity professionals gear up for Black Hat USA 2025, DNSFilter stands out as a must-visit booth for organizations seeking to strengthen their first line of defense against evolving threats. The company’s AI-driven DNS filtering solution promises to block threats 10 days earlier than competitors while addressing one of 2025’s most pressing security challenges: ShadowAI. With employees increasingly adopting generative AI tools outside IT oversight, DNSFilter’s protective DNS technology offers granular policy controls to help security teams regain visibility and control over their organization’s AI tool usage, making it particularly relevant for today’s hybrid work environments.
At their Black Hat booth #4530, DNSFilter will showcase live demonstrations of their technology in action, complete with real-world use cases and the latest research findings from their security team. Attendees can expect hands-on experiences with their intuitive deployment platform that gets organizations “from zero to protected in just minutes,” plus engage with their technical “pit crew” about DNS as a foundational security layer. The booth will also feature a unique racing-themed experience, including an actual IndyCar from their PREMA sponsorship, making it both an educational and memorable stop on the exhibit hall floor.
Find out more in this VMblog Q&A ahead of Black Hat, as we spoke to Mikey Pruitt, global partner evangelist, of DNSFilter. Make sure to get them on your MUST SEE list at the show and visit them at Booth #4530.
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VMblog: For readers who may not be familiar, can you give us the elevator pitch on your company and what makes you stand out in today’s cybersecurity landscape?
Mikey Pruitt: DNSFilter protects every click, leveraging AI-driven content filtering and threat protection to block threats 10 days earlier than competitors and secure users everywhere they work. Our solutions help boost worker productivity, minimize compliance risk, and protect corporate brands on public Wi-Fi networks. Our intuitive, granular policy controls and flexible deployment options safeguard hybrid work laptops, IoT devices, and legacy technology. Unlike traditional filtering solutions, we deploy in minutes instead of days and are trusted by more than 43,000 organizations worldwide.
VMblog: Black Hat attendees expect cutting-edge demonstrations and hands-on experiences. What innovative booth activities or live demos are you planning that will give visitors a real taste of your technology in action?
Pruitt: We will have live demo stations at our booth in the exhibit hall so attendees can come and see DNSFilter in action. We’ll have our “pit crew” there ready to talk all things DNS and why it’s still your first – and best – line of defense. We’ll also be sharing real-world use cases and examples, including some of the latest findings from our DNSFilter researchers.
VMblog: What’s your Black Hat sponsorship story? Are you a veteran exhibitor or is this a debut year? What draws your company to invest in this particular audience?
Pruitt: We are no strangers to Black Hat. We’ve attended this event numerous times and have found it to be one of the premier cybersecurity events in the industry. Our customers and users are knowledgeable security practitioners who understand the importance of implementing security via DNS as a first layer of defense. Black Hat consistently attracts some of the brightest minds in cybersecurity and we look forward each year to the in-depth conversations we know we will have there.
VMblog: If a CISO visits your booth and walks away remembering just one thing about your company, what should that key message be?
Pruitt: Protective DNS is your first and most effective line of defense. DNSFilter protects every click, leveraging AI-driven content filtering and threat protection to block threats quickly and secure users everywhere they work.
VMblog: What are some of the key takeaways of your solution that Black Hat attendees should be aware of?
Pruitt: Unlike traditional security suites, next-gen firewalls or basic filtering solutions, DNSFilter delivers:
- AI-driven threat and content categorization that helps block threats 10 days earlier than our competitors
- Granular policy enforcement that ensures organizations can adapt security and compliance controls to meet evolving needs
- Effortless deployment and management that works with an organization’s existing security tools, getting them from zero to protected in just minutes.
VMblog: With AI attacks, supply chain vulnerabilities, and cloud security challenges dominating headlines in 2025, which of these threat vectors does your solution specifically address or focus on?
Pruitt: As more organizations rush to adopt AI and generative AI tools, what we’re also seeing is that many of these (cloud-based) tools are being adopted outside the traditional purview of security/IT. In other words, employees are using these tools (like ChatGPT and others) for work on their own, but not necessarily running them past their IT leaders first. These tools can introduce a number of risks, and if IT/Security doesn’t know what’s being used within their own organization, they can’t protect against those risks or mitigate the problem. This is the concept of ShadowAI. Given this, we are seeing increased interest from our users in blocking employee access to certain AI/generative AI sites as they attempt to get a better handle on the situation. Not everyone needs access to the entire internet for their jobs; they only require specific access. We help organizations limit access and provide security at the very foundation.
VMblog: The “AI security arms race” is a hot topic this year. How is your company leveraging AI defensively, and what’s your take on the AI-powered threats we’re seeing emerge?
Pruitt: Adversaries now leverage AI to scale their attacks, from automatically generating phishing sites to rotating infrastructure through algorithmically generated domains. Attackers are moving faster and smarter, so DNS security has to evolve.
At DNSFilter, we layer adaptive machine learning models into our filtering to provide organizations with real-time detection, behavioral analysis, and domain classification at a scale that humans can’t match. By applying AI to our solution, it transforms DNS into a proactive, responsive layer of defense. It enables us to detect malicious activity the moment it begins, without waiting for signatures or threat intel updates. Our AI models classify newly registered and zero-day domains in real-time so you can block phishing and malware before threat feeds even list them.
VMblog: Zero-trust architecture has evolved significantly since 2024. How has your approach to zero-trust implementation changed, and what practical advice do you have for organizations still in the planning stages?
Pruitt: An important aspect of zero trust to consider today is access. No one really needs access to all of the internet, especially in a work setting. Your users simply need high-performance access to the resources required to do their jobs and nothing more. Setting the right access policy is key. Organizations should think about this in terms of the three As: authentication, authorization and audits. In other words, break it down into these questions:
- Is your user who they claim to be?
- Given who they say they are, what can they access based on their role?
- For every action, is there an immutable ledger of that activity?
VMblog: What’s the biggest cybersecurity blind spot you’re seeing organizations struggle with in 2025, and how does your solution illuminate that gap?
Pruitt: ShadowAI is becoming a major challenge, and security leaders have to take action. Employees are rapidly adopting AI and generative AI tools, but this is often done outside the purview of IT and security teams. As a result, we’re seeing the rise of so-called ShadowAI, and without knowledge of the tools being used, security teams can’t protect their organizations from potential risks. We’re seeing increased interest in being able to control the use of AI; in fact, we’ve added a generative AI category that enables our customers to block their users from accessing some of these sites.
VMblog: What should be at the top of every security leader’s priority list as we move through 2025?
Pruitt: As mentioned above, Shadow AI needs to be a key concern for security leaders today. Security leaders have to ensure their teams have full visibility into the AI tools being used within the organization so that they can properly secure them and mitigate risk.
VMblog: Looking toward 2026 and beyond, what emerging threat or technology trend keeps you up at night, and how is your company preparing for it?
Pruitt: What we saw in the first half of 2025 is that new domains are proliferating. In fact, they’re surpassing phishing and malware to become the most trafficked threat category on our DNSFilter network. While new domains aren’t necessarily malicious, they should be treated as suspicious. Threat actors increasingly register new domains for a few different reasons, including capitalizing on trends with catchy domain names. Since these new names typically don’t appear on blocklists yet, attackers have a window of time for exploitation that can enable them to pull off things like “fast flux” attacks, in which domains are cycled quickly to avoid detection.
This will continue to be a major problem, made worse by the use of AI, which bad actors are leveraging to spin up new domains faster than ever before.
To combat these challenges, we continue to innovate with our proprietary categorization technology, creating more robust threat blocking so users can proactively block suspicious domains, mitigate risk and gain tighter control of their network.
VMblog: Beyond your product pitch, what’s one piece of actionable cybersecurity wisdom you’d share with every Black Hat attendee who stops by your booth?
Pruitt: It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the alphabet soup of solutions, and this can sometimes result in being oversold. To ensure you select the right solution for your organization’s unique challenge and situation, look for solutions that are safe, effective, and easy to use. A security team member shouldn’t have to have years of experience just to use a vendor’s product.
VMblog: Does your team have any speaking engagements, workshop sessions, or research presentations at Black Hat that attendees should prioritize?
Pruitt: Our CTO, TK Keanini, will speak on the topic, “what does DNS need to be when it grows up?” on Thursday, Aug. 7 at 1:30 p.m.
VMblog: What’s the most creative or memorable giveaway item you’re bringing to your booth this year?
Pruitt: We are leaning into our love of racing and will be giving out special swag that showcases our sponsorship with PREMA, a racing team that participates in the IndyCar series. We’ll even have one of their cars in our booth to give our booth visitors (and racing fans) an up-close look. We’ll be giving out small die-cast cars and yo-yos with a chance to win bigger prizes like a large die-cast IndyCar and a 3D printer.
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