According to statistics, cybercrime instances are increasing globally, resulting in enormous losses for organizations and individuals alike. Fortunately, several approaches can be used to defend against cyber threats and alleviate some of the damage they might inflict.
Using cybersecurity proxies is one of these strategies. However, how can proxies be used for cybersecurity? This blog will attempt to address this critical question.
Statistics on Cybercrime
A total of over 790,000 reports of suspected internet crime were filed with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Centre (IC3) in 2020, resulting in losses of over $4.2 billion. Many types of cybercrime have been brought to light, including investment fraud, email phishing, and ransomware.
According to a report from 2020, global losses from cybercrime have reportedly reached $1 trillion since 2018 ($945 billion to be exact). Analysts expect that losses and the number of cases will rise in 2021 and continue to rise for some time to come.
According to these figures, cybercrime is becoming an ever-increasing global concern. The term “cybercrime” encompasses a wide range of illegal behaviours that can harm businesses in two ways: by stealing revenue or by tarnishing their reputation. Cybercrime can also result in a user’s hard-earned money being stolen or their personal data and sensitive information being breached.
What is Proxy Server?
As a proxy, or proxy server, an intermediate between your computer and the internet, it serves as a conduit for all your internet traffic. Your computer’s queries are routed through the proxy to a new IP address, ensuring your surfing activity is completely anonymous. Using proxies can go a long way in securing your identity in a world where identity theft is commonplace on the internet. It’s true that proxies are utilized in numerous ways.
Proxies Used in Cybersecurity Operations
Residential proxies and data centre proxies can be used to secure your house or business from cybercriminals. Proxies in data centres are lightning-fast. Unlimited bandwidth, top-notch performance, and unsurpassed uptime are also included.
Residential proxies, on the other hand, are great if you want to remain unnoticed by using the IP address of a real person. Access to content/websites that would normally be inaccessible if a location-specific IP address was not utilized can be gained through residential proxies. As we’ll explain later, reverse proxies and transparent proxies can also be used for cybersecurity activities.
To put it another way, each of these categories has its own set of uses. In terms of cybersecurity, how do each of these proxies serve their purpose? Let’s get into greater depth on this.
How Do Proxies Help Cybersecurity?
For the following purposes, you can employ cybersecurity proxies.
1. Phishing Email Protection
A kind of cybercrime known as email phishing is one in which thieves mimic organizations through email or text messages. They do this to get financial information (such as credit card numbers) or account credentials (such as usernames and passwords). If email phishing leads to virus and ransomware assaults, it might cost millions of dollars.
Proxy servers may be used by organizations to avoid this. Email scraping is made easier with the use of email proxies, which make it easier to look for potentially damaging material or connections. The outcome is that harmful emails are prevented from reaching inboxes. In this case, data center proxies are the preferred choice owing to their superior speed, reliability, and performance.
Businesses should invest in ransomware security in addition to deploying proxies. Check out our ransomware preparation checklist. Ransomware tabletop exercises are an excellent way for organizations who are serious about cybersecurity to put their preparations to the test.
2. Prevention of Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS)
A distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) aims to take down a website. To overload a server, an attacker often sends an unusually high volume of requests (several times the server’s capacity).
A content delivery network (CDN) is an effective defence against distributed denial of service (DDoS) assaults (CDN). A CDN is a dispersed network of proxy servers. The content of the website is typically stored on each of the CDN’s proxies. Visitors that want the site’s content will be routed to the closest proxy, where they may download it.
Reverse proxies, on the other hand, may help protect against DDoS assaults. On the server-side of the internet connection, a reverse proxy acts as an intermediary. Web pages that are often requested may be stored in a cache to prevent assaults on the server. The server must be set up properly in order to generate it.
3. Protecting Your Brand/Impression
Businesses lose billions of dollars each year due to counterfeiting. Brand or identity theft is committed by the perpetrators of this crime. As a first step, they manufacture counterfeit goods and wrap them in registered logos of well-known corporations. As a final step, counterfeiters sell their items either online or brick and mortar establishments as if they were real.
Proxy servers allow corporations to keep tabs on product listings. Access to geo-restricted websites may be gained via the use of a proxy server. How to do it – There are usually large pools of IP addresses for each proxy type available to service providers. The IP addresses in these pools come from various countries. As a result, by utilizing proxy servers, corporations may access material that is restricted to certain regions.
As a result, organizations can better safeguard their brands thanks to data center proxies’ performance and quickness. It’s worth noting that data centre proxies outperform residential proxies in this situation.
4. Protection Against Attacks and Data Breach
It’s worth noting that phishing isn’t limited to emails anymore. Scam phishing websites with URLs that closely mimic the real URLs of organizations are often set up by cybercriminals. There were 611,877 phishing sites in the first quarter of 2021, up 269 per cent from the same period in 2020.
It is the goal of this kind of site to collect login information from naïve visitors. To combat phishing sites, enterprises may use sophisticated data center proxy services like those offered by Akamai or Cloudflare.
5. Malware Prevention
Transparent proxies may be used by businesses to block malware-infected websites. Users may access other safe websites with the help of this form of proxy. The term “transparent proxies” comes from the fact that consumers may not be aware of their presence in a network.
Conclusion
Scams and fraud on the internet may be mitigated with the use of proxy servers. For cybersecurity activities, you may make use of a variety of proxies. The datacenter proxies, on the other hand, are favoured due to their lightning-fast speed, excellent uptime, and unparalleled performance. In addition, you may employ reverse proxies and transparent proxies to guard against DDoS and malware assaults on your servers and network, respectively. ..
