Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Top Advantages of a Proxy

Proxies are not always well-understood. Many people learn of proxies through learning how they can be abused, but this is obviously not what they are intended for. The following are some of the basic advantages that can be gained by employing a proxy in a business context.

A VPN proxy is a useful tool, first of all, for continuity. When your network goes down, it takes a lot of functions offline, particularly those that are useful for communication. When those communications are time sensitive, this can result in data lost. However, a VPN will not be on the same network as your primary machines. This means that when people try to contact you or fetch information, they won't just hit the internet equivalent of empty air. Instead, they'll hit your VPN, which can be configured to inform them of the situation. This allows you to maintain continuity through outages.

Further, while anonymity on the web can certainly be abused, it has legitimate uses as well. A VPN can protect your business by allowing the points of exposure to the open internet to be mitigated. Instead of routing your employees through various web services, which may or may not be compromised, you can send them through your private VPN, shielding their internet usage from competitors and cyber criminals.

Proxies are misunderstood, but the security benefits they can offer can make all the difference in keeping your business rolling when the worst happens, and it is more than worth it for any dedicated business owner to investigate them.

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