Domain Name System (DNS) services provider NeuStar has extended its network of nodes in Europe to help cope with denial-of-service and other security threats, and provide more effective failover if an outage hits the UK.

The new node of NeuStar's proprietary UltraDNS network is situated in Telecity's Amsterdam facility, part of the Amsterdam Internet Exchange.

The location is geographically strategic in that it will allow failover into Amsterdam if a catastrophic failure hits the UK, without causing any noticeable effects on customer systems, according to NeuStar chief technologist Rodney Joffe.

"If the UK suffered a major terrorist event, for example, now we have the infrastructure to pick up the load," he said. "We can also do more on the phishing, pharming and malware front, using our Amsterdam node for triangulation to identify some of these attacks."

Joffe claimed that customers are becoming increasingly aware that the DNS layer could be a vulnerable target if threats such as DNS cache poisoning are not adequately addressed.

"Companies and the bad guys have realised that the DNS is a really nice vector for attack," he said. "You can put an enormous amount of infrastructure in the ground but, if you can't resolve the domain names, it doesn't matter."