There are much you need to know about Proxies and Their Uses in Cybersecurity and Brand Protection in 2023.
Cybersecurity and brand protection are growing concerns for many businesses. Data breaches and brand theft are reaching an all-time high, leaving many companies concerned about their online safety. However, having an in-house cybersecurity team to manage these concerns can be expensive. As such, businesses are outsourcing their protection and using simple tools such as VPNs, proxies, and more to protect their valuable assets. But just how does a proxy help with cybersecurity and brand protection?
In this article, we look at how businesses can improve their cybersecurity using a proxy. Whether you choose datacenter proxies or the more expensive residential proxies, these tools can make a big difference when protecting your business online.
Proxy Types to Use for Cybersecurity?
Regarding cybersecurity, there are two types of proxies favored by businesses. These are residential and datacenter proxies. Choosing between these two will depend on the type of business you have and your unique business activities.
For example, residential proxies are better suited if your business does a lot of data collection or if you use multiple automation tools. Residential proxies have IPs from real devices, which makes them look more authentic. This gives them the ability to be paired with automation tools, like web scrapers, without being detected or blocked.
Alternatively, suppose your business only does some basic online browsing and data sharing but you deal with a lot of confidential data. In that case, a datacenter proxy might be a better option. A datacenter proxy is much faster than its residential counterpart, and it offers unlimited bandwidth, high performance, and unmatched uptime.
Regardless of which connection type you choose, make sure that you have a dedicated proxy. Dedicated proxies mean that the IP provided is assigned exclusively to your connection. As such, you’ll keep the same IP address, which makes proxy and IP management much easier for businesses that don’t have large IT or cybersecurity teams.
How Do Proxies Improve Cybersecurity?
The impact of cyber-attacks is rapidly growing, making the importance of cybersecurity for businesses paramount. In 2022, the FBIs’ Internet Crime Report showed that the US public reported a total of 800,944 cybercrime complaints. This number doesn’t include crimes that go unreported or undetected. Among these statistics, phishing, data breaches, and identity theft made up the top ten crime types by the number of victims.
Let’s take a look at how a simple tool, like datacenter proxies, can help improve your security and prevent your business from becoming another victim.
Prevent Phishing Attacks
Phishing attacks are one of the most prevalent cybersecurity risks. In these attacks, cybercriminals use various forms of communication, such as email, to collect sensitive personal data to impersonate individuals or organizations or to spread malware.
When you use a proxy on your business network, it adds additional protection to your email servers as well. Besides this, you can also block certain email addresses or websites linked to unsafe content. By doing this and training your employees on spotting suspicious emails, you reduce your susceptibility to phishing, hacking, ransomware, and malware attacks.
Protection Against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks
DDoS attacks are a common cybersecurity incident. Attackers would overwhelm a website with requests to the point where the entire site shuts down. This can be extremely detrimental to businesses that rely on their websites to function.
Responding to this type of attack requires a content delivery network (CDN). These are a type of distributed proxy server. They mirror web content and services in different locations. As such, visitors connect to the nearest proxy server when they connect. If a DDoS occurs, only one server will be down, and traffic will be rerouted to the next closest server, keeping things moving.
Prevent Data Breaches
Data breaches can be a serious issue for businesses. Not only can you face fines if you don’t protect the data, but you also lose consumers’ trust, and your business reputation takes a severe knock.
Adding datacenter proxies to your business network helps to protect your data better, as hackers will have a seriously tough time getting through the servers. Also, you can pair this proxy with web scraping tools to help identify any phishing sites that might try to scam login credentials from your employees or users.
Brand Protection
Protecting your brand is vitally important. Customers and employees associate whether or not they’ll support a business directly with your brand. However, there are a number of things that can harm your brand perception. These can include brand theft, corporate espionage, and more.
Proxies are a good way to start protecting your brand. First, adding a proxy to your business network will make it more difficult for hackers to access your systems and confidential information, such as customer data and trade secrets. Proxies can also be used alongside web scrapers to find instances where your brand’s intellectual property (IP) is being used without your authorization – such as fake websites, competitor products, etc. Datacenter proxies are especially useful when it comes to protecting your brand because of their improved performance and speed.
—
Final Thoughts
Cybersecurity and brand protection are intrinsically linked. Without adequate security to protect your intellectual property, confidential data, and client information, your brand can fall victim to phishing scams, breaches, and other activities that negatively impact your brand. Customers don’t want to support businesses that are insecure or place their information at risk. Adding datacenter proxies to your network alongside other security measures is a great way to bolster your cybersecurity and protect your brand.