According to statistics, the number of cybercrime incidents is increasing throughout the globe, resulting in significant losses for both organizations and people. Fortunately, numerous strategies can be used to guard against cyber-attacks and, at the very least, alleviate some of the harm they may inflict.
Cybersecurity proxies are one of these methods. However, how can proxies be used for cybersecurity? We want to provide a solution to this crucial subject in this blog.
According to the FBI’s Online Crime Complaint Center (IC3) report, there were more than 790,000 suspected internet crime reports in 2021, resulting in losses of more than $4.2 billion. Investment fraud, email phishing, and ransomware attacks were among the incidents documented.
According to 2021 research, global cybercrime damages have approached $1 trillion during 2018 ($945 billion to be precise). According to researchers’ forecasts, the number of instances and losses likely climbed in 2022 and would continue to rise long into the future.
These figures show that cybercrime is an ever-increasing scourge that affects the whole planet. Cybercrime encompasses a wide range of illegal acts, many of which may harm companies by siphoning off a portion of their income or sullying their name. From the standpoint of the user, cybercrime may result in the loss of hard-earned money or the compromise of personal data and sensitive information. Proxy servers, on the other hand, may safeguard both corporations and people.
What is a Proxy Server, and how does it work?
A proxy, also known as a proxy server, is a virtual or physical middleman that routes all internet traffic from your computer or a web server. The proxy reroutes queries from your computer to another IP address, making your surfing experience anonymous. Proxies can help secure your identity in a world when identity theft is all too common. Cybersecurity proxies are used in a wide range of applications.
Proxies Used in Cybersecurity Operations
You may pick between residential proxies and datacenter proxies to safeguard your house or company from cybercriminals. Proxies for datacenters are quick. They also provide unrivaled uptime, limitless bandwidth, and exceptional performance.
Residential proxies, on the other hand, are great in instances when you want to stay entirely
unnoticed by using someone else’s IP address. Residential proxies allow you to access geo-restricted material and websites that would otherwise be unavailable if you didn’t utilize a location-specific IP address. You may also employ reverse proxies and transparent proxies for cybersecurity activities, as we’ll go into later.
Each of these classes is best suited for unique use cases in this respect. However, how useful are each of these proxies in cybersecurity operations?
What Role Do Proxies Play in Cybersecurity?
Cybersecurity proxies may be used for the following tasks:
- Anti-phishing email protection
- Theft of a brand’s or an individual’s identity is prevented.
- Protection against distributed denial of service (DDoS)
- Defending against ransomware and data leaks
- Anti-virus protection
- Anti-phishing email protection
Email phishing is a kind of cybercrime in which thieves use emails or text messages to impersonate companies. They do this in order to steal money or user account information. Furthermore, email phishing may lead to malware and ransomware assaults, resulting in losses of millions of dollars.
Proxy servers may be used by businesses to avoid this. Email scraping, which examines emails for damaging material or links, is made easier using proxies for email security. As a consequence, they keep potentially harmful emails out of inboxes. Because of their excellent performance, speed, and uptime, datacenter proxies are recommended for this purpose.
Businesses should invest in appropriate ransomware security in addition to deploying proxies. Organizations that are serious about their cybersecurity posture should also conduct dedicated ransomware tabletop exercises to test their incident response methods.
- Identity/Brand Theft Protection
Counterfeiting is a problem that costs companies billions of dollars in lost income every year. Brand or identity theft is a crime committed by perpetrators of this crime. They start by making bogus items, which they then package with registered trademarks of well-known brands and businesses. Finally, the counterfeiters market the items as real through e-commerce or traditional retail locations.
Fortunately, corporations may use proxy servers to keep an eye on product listings. Proxy servers, in reality, provide access to geo-restricted websites. Here’s how it’s done: Proxy service providers often maintain a large pool of IP addresses for each proxy type. IP addresses from various geographical areas are included in these pools. As a result, organizations may access material intended for citizens of certain nations by utilizing proxy servers.
This, together with the performance and speed characteristics of data center proxies, aids enterprises in protecting their branding. It’s worth noting that data center proxies are superior to residential proxies for this purpose.
- DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) Attack Prevention
A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assault is a malicious effort to bring a website’s activities to a halt. An attacker generally sends a large number of requests, much more than the server can handle, and therefore overwhelms it.
Businesses should utilize a content delivery network to avoid DDoS assaults (CDN). A CDN is a network of proxy servers located around the world. The content of the website is normally stored on each of the CDN’s proxies. As a result, a visitor who wants to access the site is linked to the closest proxy, from which they may download the material they want.
Reverse proxies may also protect against DDoS assaults. On the server’s end of the internet connection, a reverse proxy is installed. This protects the server from assaults by caching frequently visited web pages for quick retrieval when needed. It’s made by setting the server in the right way.
- Defending Against Attacks and Data Breach
It’s worth noting that phishing isn’t limited to emails. Cybercriminals often put up full scam phishing websites with URLs that look just like the URLs of legitimate organizations. In the first quarter of 2021, there were 611,877 phishing sites, up 269 percent from the first quarter of 2020.
These websites are designed to collect credentials from naïve visitors. Companies may use web scraping to discover and block phishing sites from running using quick and strong data center proxies.
- Malware Defense
Companies may employ transparent proxies to prevent malware-infected websites. Users may connect to other secure websites using this form of proxy. The term transparent proxies come from the fact that consumers may not be aware of their presence in a network.
Proxy servers provide an additional degree of security against scams and online fraud. Importantly, several sorts of proxies may be used for cybersecurity activities. However, some are recommended, such as datacenter proxies, due to their speed, high uptime, and unrivaled performance. However, reverse proxies and transparent proxies may be used to defend your servers or network against DDoS and malware assaults, respectively.
