Stability, Cleanup, and Building Momentum for What Comes Next

As December came to a close, the ThreatSTOP Security, Intelligence, and Research team made a deliberate choice that reflects how we think about protection in real world environments. Rather than introducing new targets or feeds during the holiday period, we prioritized stability, operational consistency, and meaningful internal improvements that benefit both our customers and our team.

Between Thanksgiving and New Years, many organizations operate with reduced staffing, tighter change controls, and limited appetite for disruption. Even well tested protections can introduce unnecessary risk when deployed at the wrong time. Our goal is not just to deliver powerful protections, but to deliver them responsibly.

No New Releases Does Not Mean No Work Stopped

While no new targets or feeds were released in December, ThreatSTOP protections continued to operate and update as expected. Intelligence refreshed continuously, Protective DNS protections remained active across DNS Defense Cloud and DNS Defense deployments, and IP Defense protections continued to enforce controls across firewalls, routers, IPS platforms, and cloud environments.

Behind the scenes, December was one of the most productive months of the year.

A Month Focused on Cleanup and Improvement

December was spent cleaning things up across the detection pipeline. This included hundreds of small but meaningful improvements that make protections easier to build, easier to deploy, and easier to maintain.

For customers, these improvements translate into smoother deployments, more predictable behavior, and fewer edge cases. For the Security team, they mean faster creation of detections, more reliable promotion from testing to production, and fewer opportunities for error.

Automation was refined, workflows were hardened, and the systems that support detection creation were simplified wherever possible. These changes may not always be visible on day one, but they directly impact the quality and consistency of every protection we release.

This work ensures that when new protections are introduced, they arrive cleanly, accurately, and without friction.

Preparing the Next Wave of Protections

While outward releases paused, preparation did not. Throughout December, the team finalized nearly 50 new types of protections that are scheduled to roll out beginning in January. These include new compliance focused protections, premium intelligence feeds, and expanded detection logic designed to address evolving threats across DNS and IP based infrastructure.

Each protection has been built with the same principles in mind. Accurate intelligence, operational safety, and proactive risk reduction.

Rather than releasing everything at once, these protections will be delivered in a steady cadence. Beginning in January, customers can expect new releases each week, with accompanying blog posts that explain the threats being addressed and how ThreatSTOP protections reduce exposure.

Protection Designed for Real World Networks

ThreatSTOP protections are created by the Security, Intelligence, and Research team to address real threats without creating operational headaches. Our protections cover command and control activity, phishing, invalid traffic, peer to peer communication, data exfiltration, spam, distributed denial of service activity, and more.

Whether protections are enforced through Protective DNS using DNS Defense Cloud or DNS Defense on customer infrastructure, or through IP Defense at the network or cloud layer, the focus remains proactive protection with minimal disruption.

December reinforced that philosophy. Stability matters. Cleanup matters. Preparation matters. And when protections are released, they should arrive with confidence.

What to Expect in January

January will mark the beginning of a steady rollout of new protections. Each week will bring new capabilities, new intelligence, and deeper coverage across both DNS and IP based threat surfaces.

If December was about refinement and preparation, January will be about momentum.