Are proxy servers safe?

[Father]

Tools for protecting traffic, accessing blocked resources, and increasing anonymity on the network have not lost their relevance since the first Telegram block in Russia. Since then, various applications for bypassing content blocking have appeared for many ordinary users.

The same trend is also relevant for businesses that need not only to protect network traffic, but also to be able to access blocked sites for conducting commercial activities, conducting advertising campaigns, and so on.

The best solution for such tasks is proxy servers. This article discusses the main aspects of choosing a proxy, what a proxy server is, and what it is used for.

What is a proxy server?​

A proxy is an intermediate server that is placed between the Internet user and the requested resource. It is quite easy to encounter it online: proxies are used by both well-known marketplaces and large companies.

Proxy-server is a tool for indirect access to Internet resources when there is a third-party server between the requested site and the device. It is used for various purposes, from ensuring user privacy to protecting the company's infrastructure.

Kirill Romanov
Business Development Manager of the Information Security Department of Sissoft

Using a proxy server significantly increases the security of your organization by filtering your work IP addresses. A proxy helps filter traffic during DDoS attacks, and acts as a vigilant guard at the entrance to the organization's infrastructure, which filters out malware.

When choosing a proxy server, it is important to take into account the speed of its operation, how it stores information about the request, in what form and in what country this data is stored, whether the information is encrypted, and whether the product manufacturer complies with international data collection rules.

A proxy allows the company to work in detail with incoming and outgoing traffic. This includes restricting it in the event of cyber attacks and prohibiting employees from accessing certain resources from the network.

What are proxy servers used for?​

The functions that a proxy provides can be divided into two groups: security and operational. Operational features include the ability to gain access to resources that are blocked in different countries.

We are talking not only about permanent blockages by the decision of the state, but also about situational ones, when a company disables access to its resources from different regions. The last such case occurred with the online services of Sberbank, which were unavailable to users from abroad for some time. Most likely, the company was protecting its infrastructure from a cyberattack in this way, which resulted in inconvenience for users.

Ernest Raevsky
Head of Crypto, NFT in GetRentaCar

It is important to understand that the use of proxy servers can never bring 100% confidentiality, because when searching for people who used a proxy, authorized employees can request information about the source IP address. But in terms of using it for legal and everyday activities, you can trust the use of a proxy.

Based on my experience, you should trust not only the proxy sales service, but also people's reviews, their mechanics and capabilities. The price, of course, should not be too low and not too high for a certain period of time. Also, when choosing a proxy, you need to know what type of proxy is needed for operation (socks4, https, etc.).

If we talk about the protective functions, we can distinguish the following:

1. Control of internal traffic. From the banal blocking of access to entertainment sites and social networks for employees to a detailed study of requests during the investigation of a cyber incident.
2. Improve performance and load balancing. Faster loading of files is possible due to their caching.
3. Disguise and increase privacy. The proxy "hides" the real IP address from external resources.

However, the proxy server's capabilities are largely limited by the company that provides it. If we talk about free solutions, then there are many "transparent" ones that simply provide an indirect connection, but do not hide the source IP in any way and do not protect traffic. Therefore, it is important to choose the right provider for this type of service if the company does not plan to deploy and connect a proxy server on its own.

Proxy server selection criteria​

From a business perspective, choosing a proxy server is not much different from choosing any other digital product. As a rule, three factors are most important:

• functional features;
• planned budget;
• estimated load.

One of the specific factors that "came" to business from the world of information security is the issue of trust. There is no single recipe here: some focus on user ratings and reviews, some on the history of the supplier company and its reputation, and some on specific technical features and characteristics.

Vitaly Mishchenko
Head of the SPI Group Information Security Practices of the Digital Economy League

The choice depends on the range of tasks and the purpose of use. To choose a proxy correctly, you need to define the following parameters.

For business:

• activation goal;
• number of users who use the proxy;
• features you need, such as web control or malware protection;
• the amount of traffic that will pass through the proxy.

For users:

• the activation goal is anonymity, bypassing blocking, and so on;
• easy integration with the browser;
• speed of operation;
• location of the proxy server;
• price.

Conventionally, all solutions from the company's perspective can be divided into three groups based on the business model of providing services.

The first is free services. They are monetized in one of three ways:

• selling ads;
• external financing;
• selling data.

As a rule, these methods are combined with each other, so the risk that these companies will be sold is quite high. Free services are only suitable in cases where privacy is absolutely not important, as well as ensuring data security.

The next group is paid solutions. The market is quite developed, so you can meet both high-quality "beginners" and" oldies " with a very dubious reputation.

Pavel Kuznetsov
Product Director of the company "Garda Technologies"

If you have decided to use an Internet proxy or VPN service, then when making a choice, you should rely on the solutions of large, well-known manufacturers, do not register with little-known services, and do not trust noname developers. Among others, VPN services are provided by some domestic manufacturers of the information security industry.

In a sense, this is a lottery, where the high cost of services does not necessarily indicate a high quality of services. The service's reputation in the market and customer reviews are crucial.

The third option is to deploy the server independently and connect it to the company's infrastructure. The complexity of implementation here directly depends on the planned load on the server and the number of users.

Ilya Sinenko
Head of RadioMart

As for choosing a proxy server, I would not trust my information to strangers, especially free servers. If you don't care about your data being leaked, you can use any proxy, even a free one.

But if the data is important, it is much better to raise the proxy server yourself. You can rent a server, but you don't need a lot of resources for this. And the Internet is full of articles and ready-made scripts for quickly deploying a proxy server.

Personally, I would advise you to raise the VPN server. For beginners, there is the SSHeller program, in which you enter the SSH username and password from the rented server and then you need to make 2 clicks to raise the OpenVPN server, the program will do the rest for you.

In current conditions, self-renting a proxy server can be very difficult. First of all, due to the complexity of currency transactions. For some time, this problem was solved with the help of cryptocurrencies, but now this possibility is becoming increasingly difficult.

Results​

A proxy server is a fairly simple and functional tool that can be used both for business tasks and for improving the level of information security in a company.

In the context of the business segment, free solutions have a weak potential, since they are limited in functionality and are often monetized through the sale of user information to third parties, which is unacceptable for businesses.

The best solution in the current environment is to deploy the server independently and then configure it. At the same time, it is important to analyze the specifics of the company's work and choose servers for rent in neutral or friendly countries in order to avoid sudden outages.