It seems like if something goes wrong within IT these days, it usually has something to with DNS.

DNS, which is the arcane system we depend on to translate web site address into numbers that computers can understand, has been the lynchpin of all things Internet for more than 25 years now. Unfortunately, not too many people really understand the inner working of DNS and, not surprisingly, hackers have discovered that DNS provides an avenue of attack because people can't really secure what they really don't understand.

In other words, if ever there was an aspect of enterprise computing where it makes sense to rely on the service of third-party experts its DNS management. That's a big part of the premise of a free service called DNSstuff.com that at least 1 million IT people have come to rely on to help them figure out what's going on with the DNS servers.

Now the folks that make DNSstuff.com are trying to make some money by coming up with an enhanced alert service that IT organization can subscribe to get the latest information concerning security and management issues associated with DNS. Given the fact that an ounce of prevention is always worth more than a pound of cure, subscribing to this service makes sense of anybody managing mission-critical Web applications.

The service works by running a series of 55 different tests against a customer's DNS server implementation. If there is a potential issue, the service then sends an alert telling the IT manager about the potential problem.

It's impossible to accurately say just how many DNS issues there are out there. But the folks that run DNSstuff conducted there own user survey and came up with a number that indicates that as much as 70 percent of all active domains are improperly configured. If you accept the statement that there are about 130 million active domains on the Web, the chances are pretty good that possibly 70 million of them have a potential issue.

Things may not be as dire as all that but given the fact that DNS will probably be with us another 25 years or more, chances are that an alert service that costs somewhere between $49 to $79 a year is a pretty good deal no matter how savvy you think you may or may not be about DNS.