Cybersecurity: What Are Proxies? How Do They Work?
For both individuals and businesses, being on the internet comes with a significant amount of risk. These risks can range from mild cases of getting discovered online to severe cases of having your data breached and your intellectual property stolen.
Cybersecurity is the science of ensuring that these risks never happen. It entails the various ways of protecting an individual or brand from the many ills of the internet.
And the lack of it has been said to result in over $6 trillion this year alone. One of the most efficient ways to establish better Cybersecurity is by using proxies.
Proxies provide an easy way to protect yourself, keep your eyes on your online identity and ensure proper brand and intellectual protection. Additionally, it helps to overcome the many challenges associated with Cybersecurity.
What Are Proxies?
The term ‘proxy’ generally refers to a person or thing that acts on behalf of another. Hence, we can correctly describe a proxy as a machine or piece of technology that can sufficiently act in your stead.
Proxies, essentially, stand as a gateway between you and the web and help to deliver your requests to the internet as well as return results.
A proxy service helps you contact a target destination with ease and anonymously too. It protects you and your data during sensitive operations.
When using a proxy, you are guaranteed access to restricted contents as proxies can switch internet protocol (IP) address and location to make you appear from a different location.
Aside from all the above, proxies can also be used to increase browsing speed and boost the general performance of your organization.
They can also use caching mechanisms and load balancing to prevent servers from crashing during excessive incoming traffic, thereby acting as more than just intermediaries.
How Proxies Work
But how do these computers work? While different proxies may function differently based on their design and application, it is considered that all proxies work in the general manner described below:
- Every device that accesses the web must have an IP address which the internet can use to identify individual devices and send back results accordingly
- However, this same unique address can become the sole target of the many cases of breaches, bans and restrictions
- Proxies are also equipped with IP addresses, proxies, and locations
- When you send out a request using a proxy service, the proxy accepts the request and forwards it to the target destination using its details
- Then it collects the results, checks them for malware before returning them to you
- This way, a proxy can keep you safe, keep your identity a secret, secure your data, change your IP and location to grant you access to restricted contents, and filter the contents all at the same time
Cybersecurity Challenges
Cybersecurity is the process of keeping an individual or company and their data safe while on the internet. Providing Cybersecurity generally includes ensuring that browsing speed is at its best as slower browsing can lead to many problems.
It also implies that servers must be up and running at all times as even the slightest drop in uptime can result in irreversible consequences. And lastly, Cybersecurity also involves staying anonymous at all times for obvious reasons, of course.
However, there are several Cybersecurity challenges, including the following:
1. Brand and Intellectual Property Protection
One of the biggest challenges to Cybersecurity is protecting your brand and its intellectual assets. This is mostly because the internet is a global village, thereby causing assets that were once localized to be spread across the globe.
This is because it is now easier for people to counterfeit a brand or steal their precious assets.
When such theft happens, it can cause the original business enough loss to shut down.
2. Data Breach Protection
Leaks and breaches occur all the time as more scrupulous elements continue to try to steal data. These breaches are usually targeted at unsuspecting internet users, and data such as usernames, passwords, location, email addresses are taken for all the wrong reasons.
This also undermines and poses a significant challenge to Cybersecurity.
3. Server Load
Another important challenge to internet security is the amount of load that is placed on servers.
Servers are usually designed to bear a specified amount of traffic, and when this amount is exceeded, the server could crash either temporarily or permanently.
Consequently, this can result in the loss of resources, revenue, and even the brand’s image.
4. Anti-Browsing Mechanisms
And sometimes, the challenges that affect Cybersecurity are mechanisms that partially or completely prevent access to certain parts of the internet.
These can be geo-blocks or geo-restrictions that limit or hinder access to certain websites and servers. They target IPs from specific locations.
Consequently, the affected devices will find it difficult or impossible to reach the contents of these websites.
Proxies As Solutions to Cybersecurity
Fortunately, proxies, such as the ones provided by Oxylabs, can be used to mitigate all of the challenges highlighted above. For instance, using a proxy service provides you with a safer option for gathering enough data to protect your brand and its assets.
Also, proxies allow you safe and secure means of interacting with the web, thereby preventing any form of data breach.
In the same vein, proxies can easily help balance traffic amongst the available servers and employ caches to prevent one particular server from crashing.
And finally, using a proxy is an effective way to go around all the many mechanisms put in place to prevent browsing. By changing IPs, proxies, and device location, a proxy can very well allow you access to any part of the internet.
Final Thought
Cybersecurity is as important as cyber-activities. Even though it can be easily encumbered with several challenges, as seen above, it has been demonstrated that using a proper type of proxy service can help you overcome these challenges and browse the web safely and successfully.
