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In the past, companies had computers for use in the employees’ work activities during working hours and, at the end of the day, they went home with at most some papers and company information. At that time, cell phones were used only for connection and exchange of text messages.
In reality, protecting the company from a virtual threat is simpler, given that you have a clear view of the perimeter between the internet and the company’s internal network segments. Fortunately this is no longer a reality, information is in many places, when a collaborator leaves the company, in many cases there are notebooks, tablets, smartphones still connected and with corporate data. Coming to this reality, BYOD and COPE, concepts are gaining ground in companies, collaborating to increase productivity, bringing new challenges to maintaining safety, inside and outside the corporate environment.
This means that the perimeter has changed, and whatever carries this perimeter is the device itself. While collaborators are in the company, they are protected by the security architecture of that place, but when they go home, or travel for business, this structure does not guarantee more security for their access and exchange of information.
Even in the face of these changes, there are many emerging companies that have not experienced this need for multilevel/multichannel protection, so they find information security very costly and complex and, because of that, they even end up applying basic solutions to their environments .
In this article we have brought a simple and efficient concept for companies that start applying security concepts, or for those that eventually underutilize their security solutions. A proxy servercan assist positively in many aspects of the environment, as highlighted below.
Higher visibility with proxy server
A proxy serverat its core should bring greater visibility to what happens in terms of internet consumption in your business. This is possible because the proxy is what manages the equipment connections to the internet.
Once the internet traffic, whether pages or other applications, supported by the proxy service, and these are directed to the proxy server, it is possible to know what is being accessed by the users.
Visibility allows us to define some fundamental points for a business environment, making the use of the Internet a more interesting experience for users and companies, avoiding waste or users affecting others with inadequate internet resource consumption.
Thus, it is possible to know how much time users spend using the internet, which are the most accessed websites in time, internet consumption, schedules among other facilities. Over time, this kind of knowledge should facilitate decision making, to verify what can be accessed in the corporate environment.
This is a fundamental element of security, because without knowing what actually happens, in terms of Internet consumption, it is impossible to determine the best scenarios defending the interest of users and the company.
Proxy server for greater control over internet usage
Greater visibility automatically brings a greater possibility of control. A proxy servershould offer control mechanisms that can define who can access what, at what time, with which internet consumption, among other facilities.
These control allows you to create access rules that are customized according to the needs of a user or industry, so that one’s inappropriate behavior does not interfere with the work of others.
In addition, in a framework with more control, problems associated with viruses and other threats are potentially reduced, given that in most scenarios the contamination is activated on a malicious page.
With a more restrictive proxy server, this kind of problem is very remote to happen, because even if the user clicks on malicious content the proxy will not allow access.
Greater availability by using proxy server
An environment with greater visibility and control ends up affecting another variable, highly important for companies today, which is the availability of the internet.
Availability is nothing more than keeping the internet resource available when any user wants to access it. This depends on the infrastructure to be accessed, but generally the biggest obstacles are in the local structure.
The motivation to apply resources associated with availability is usually related to slowness in the internet, or consecutive falls that hinder the execution of critical organizational processes, such as performing banking operations, issuing invoices, and so on. The more internet dependent a company is, the more availability is important to carrying out their daily activities.
A proxy servermust be able to manage the use of multiple internet links, allowing contingent outputs in the event of a failure in some internet communication link.
In the same way, the proxy must guarantee that, in case of bad use of the internet by some collaborator, this does not affect the work of the others, facilitating the identification of this type of occurrence and its isolation.
Increased security and productivity
All of the above points end up leading directly to building a safer and more productive environment. Safer because with the proxy it is possible to know the accesses to the internet and create rules of access to minimize incidental powers, personalize the use of the internet, attending to the needs of people and business.
As a result, the environment becomes more productive, because risks are minimized and everyone will have access to everything that is directly related to their work, without access being able to jeopardize the work of another employee.
Thus, through a proxy server, companies with little maturity in information security can take important steps in this direction. Likewise, a company with greater maturity and resources can validate if it is actually using its security solutions properly, taking into account the points cited in this post.
Continue reading about proxy:
Web Proxy: Content Acceleration with caching techniques
Web Proxy: Essentials on Content Categorization
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