As part of our response to COVID-19, we're working closely with the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to support the NHS. This will enable us to roll out the Protective Domain Name Service (PDNS) – a service aimed at disrupting the use of DNS for malware distribution and operation. It's been created by the NCSC, and is implemented by Nominet UK.

PDNS is a recursive resolver, which means it finds answers to DNS queries. Management of your own domains (authoritative DNS), is done separately to this NCSC service and will not be affected by the adoption of PDNS.

It's a free and reliable internet-accessible DNS service for the public sector and is one of the NCSC’s widely deployed Active Cyber Defence capabilities. It's been mandated for use by central government departments by the Cabinet Office, and is now available to the NHS.