Blacklist Mitigation

IPswiTch Networks Ltd has been trading since 2010 and have extensive experience in the Internet Service Provider industry. We offer services to clean IP blocks to make them ready for sale. When an IP block is put forward for sale it is of paramount importance that the block is clean and free from any blacklists in order to maximise it’s value. The last thing any purchaser wants is problems utilising their precious new investment.

How Do IPs Get Blacklisted

Each IPv4 IP address can have a long and chequered history in terms of how it has been used and by whom. If an IP address has been utilised for illegal or malicious purposes this activity is tracked by many global databases and the IP can be entered onto one or several blacklists.

Depending on the history of an IP address it could be on no black lists, or on several. Any of the following activities will land an IP address in hot water.

  • Email SPAM
  • Denial of Service Attacks
  • Spreading of Virus / Malware

Typically the owner of the IP block may not be aware of the illegal activity until it’s too late. ISPs own many thousands of IPs and cannot be expected to police all usage. After all it’s the Internet!

Any offences are recorded against the IP and details of the offence type and date can be queried from the blacklist database.

How are blacklists used?

Most organisations utilise security software and systems of some kind. This can be anti-virus, anti malware, but also protection from Denial of Service Attacks and Hacking attempts.

These days corporates invest a lot of money in their security infrastructure. The borders of their networks are protected by Next Generation firewalls, Web Application Firewalls, Intrusion Protection Systems. All of these systems can access a variety of blacklists, which help them decide which IPs to block, based purely on the IP address being registered on a blacklist.

Therefore keeping your IP addresses clean is important to ensure that your communications flows are not interrupted or blocked.

How Do IPs get cleaned?

IPswiTch Networks will firstly audit your IP blocks using a variety of techniques to establish their status. We work with all the major blacklist providers in order to deregister IPs from any blacklists. This can take from a few days to a few weeks depending on the IP block reputation and blacklist status.

It’s important that while we are cleaning IPs, new offences are not being committed, so it is best not to have IPs used by unknown or untrusted parties. Ideally a block would not be in use during the cleaning phase, just prior to being put on the market