Proxies or proxy servers is the word that majority of the internet users have heard of as a method to get access to blocked sites or to secure the internet in public places. But the reality is proxy servers’ capabilities and applications are way more than that. In this present cyber-concerned digital era, companies have to be extra careful about their network usage. That’s why proxy servers play a major role in not just securing the network but also filtering all internet requests. In this article, we will shed light on what are proxy servers and the reasons why you must have proxy servers in your corporation.
What are Proxy Servers?
Proxy servers or proxies are gateways between you and the internet. When you are browsing through the internet, you are directly connecting with the website. But with proxy servers, you become a hidden identity, while proxies connect with the websites on your behalf.
8 Reasons why you should use Proxy Servers
In this digital era, digital presence is becoming mandatory for businesses. In addition, addressing more customer traffic, utilizing data analytics tools, and similar other advanced technologies have just triggered the need for enhanced data security, privacy, and monitoring. This is where proxy servers play a crucial role. Following are the eight reasons that showcase the need for proxy servers for your corporation in the present era:
Proxy servers present as an important security practice for companies, as they add an additional wall of security between the internet traffic and corporate servers. Proxies help to avoid corporate networks to get in contact with unsecured or harmful websites. In addition, the empowerment of data encryption and virtual IP address makes it quite difficult for cyber-attackers to breach through the added security layer.
Network speed has a significant importance today, as no one likes a slow internet speed. With proxies, you are not just getting the security you need, but they also enhance the network speed. As an example, consider the difference between public connections and private connections. In public connections, you are sharing the server with others, which means you are limited in terms of accessing server resources, thereby reducing your speed and bandwidth. In the case of proxies, you are using dedicated servers, which means more bandwidth and faster network speed.
A proxy server is more like a web filter, which filters all your web requests to optimize your web experience by compressing traffic, caching earlier accessed web pages and files, and blocking ads from the sites. With cache files, a proxy server can store the most requested sites offline so that it can quickly load the sites the next time you request them.
Privacy is a rising concern in the present time. Internet users are becoming more concerned about privacy and the same is witnessed in the corporate world. With proxies, your original identity gets hidden and the proxy IP address is used instead, which makes you completely anonymous while browsing. This way, you can browse through your competitors’ sites or do other activities on the internet without showing your identity to anyone.
Other than anonymous browsing, proxies also help to hide browsing history, which avoids you to see target ads. Such ads are presented to you after collecting your browsing history, analyzing it, and then presenting the relevant ads to you. With proxies, such advertisers are not able to trace your browsing history, so they are not able to send your personalized ads.
Companies are mostly focused to increase the productivity of employees and avoid them spending time on irrelevant websites during work hours. Sites like social media, e-commerce, and other media sites are unnecessary for employees to use during their work hours. Besides that, companies also don’t want employees to access unsecured sites from the corporate network because it can increase the chances of data breaches or cyber-attacks.
With proxy servers, your corporate internet becomes more secure and threats-free. You get detailed info about the web content accessed from your corporate network. With such insights, you can review which sites are accessed by your employees and also pin-point any cyber-related activity. In addition, you get the power to control which device gets access and even block certain websites from getting accessed by employees.
Due to extra high web traffic, company servers often crash. It can be very costly for your business if dozens of your clients get stranded due to the inaccessibility of the services for which they paid you. Besides that, it presents as a major negative image to the present and new customers, affecting the business reputation and growth significantly.
With proxy servers, you get the ability to balance your web traffic by storing data in multiple servers. This way, the content does not overload one server. With the help of cloud computing, you can now easily distribute your content across different servers. Afterward, the proxies help to prioritize the requests one at a time, thereby avoiding overload issues. This way, your company data handling capacity increases significantly, and you can handle more traffic than before.
In the present digital era, the content you see is often filtered based on geographical area. For instance, the ads you see in social media are related to your country’s services/products, or the video recommendations you see are mostly related to your geographical area. Similarly, certain websites block certain geographical areas to access the content of the website may be due to licensing, competition, price tactics, or any other reasons. Due to such restrictions, often travelers, foreign employees, international students, and others are not able to access their own data.
Proxy servers are the ideal solution in such situations. Proxies empower you to change your present location and make you appear differently on the internet. With proxies, you have an encrypted and secure connection with masked IP to let you access any geographically restricted connection.
An IP address is of great value to cybercriminals and they are always looking to get access to it. An IP address is a digital address that lets you send and receive information from websites and do other internet-associated activities. If cyber-attackers get hands-on your IP address, they can use it to conduct illegal activities and make you the victim of it. They can use it to access illegal content, locate your location to try to penetrate the system, do Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, etc.
With proxy servers, your original IP address gets hidden and a virtual IP address is used instead. This way, there remains no room for cyber-attackers to access and use that virtual IP address to try to penetrate your company network.
Web cookies are like breadcrumbs left by websites that let them remember you. So, when you revisit the website, they remember you and your habits and can use it to provide customized marketing. But if you are using proxies, then there is no way for websites to leave cookies behind when your proxy is configured to do so. This way, not just you and your employees are avoiding cookies, but it also reduces the malware threats on the internet. With proxy servers, you will be browsing under a secure and anonymous network connection.
Proxy servers are the need of current corporations because the growing internet usage, more customer traffic, and rising cybersecurity concerns are making networks vulnerable to malfunction or threats. Proxies not just act as a firewall and perform network filtering, but caching webpage data and blocking/monitoring employees’ network usage also enhances the overall business productivity. So, if your company is not utilizing the true potential of proxy servers, then it’s time to consider proxy servers an integral part of your networks.
