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Safety is a top priority for companies and businesses. Data protection is not an option, it is a must. Cyberattacks have become more frequent lately, and simply using basic Windows security measures no longer helps as hackers and attackers gradually develop ways to circumvent them.
As a business owner, you should consider other ways to protect your data. VPNs and proxies are great ways to do this. To reveal the topic, we talked with the employees of the profile service https://you-proxy.com/. This is what they said in an interview with our correspondent.
VPNs redirect internet traffic to a designated network, thus hiding the original IP address and identity of the user. In turn, the proxy server acts as an intermediary between the client requesting a specific resource and the server that provides it.
Instead of connecting directly to the server, the client will redirect the request to the proxy server, parsing and executing the tasks or transactions in the request.
Proxies are a method of simplifying or managing requests, providing load balancing, privacy, or acting as an additional layer of protection.
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What is a proxy?
A proxy server is an intermediary or gateway between end-user clients and the websites they browse, and they broadcast network or protocol traffic.
They provide different levels of security, privacy, and overall functionality depending on your company’s needs and policies.
For example, sending a request to a specific address will go through a proxy server before reaching the website. After that, the request will return through the same proxy server that will forward it to you.
Proxies are not limited to forwarding requests. They will act as firewalls, web filters, and provide shared network connections or cache data.
In addition, they can also be used for mass data collection and provide a high level of privacy, protecting businesses from the malicious software that lurks at the corners of the Internet.
What is VPN?
A VPN is a service that redirects internet traffic to a different starting location, establishing secure and encrypted connections. Thus, it protects the privacy of its users and preserves the confidentiality of their personal data.
Because they make your activities and personal data virtually untraceable through secure and encrypted connections, VPNs provide a secure browsing experience even on public Wi-Fi.
They work by creating a data tunnel between the local network and an exit node located elsewhere. This makes users feel like they were elsewhere, limiting their actual location.
In addition to security, VPNs are also used to bypass regional restrictions that would otherwise restrict access to certain countries or parts of the world.
How are VPNs different from proxies?
While VPNs and proxies both add additional layers of security to companies and allow them to access the Internet anonymously by hiding their IP addresses, they work differently.
There is a big difference between VPN and proxy. The VPN will only encrypt the private connection for safe internet browsing. Basically, it replaces your ISP’s routing, protecting traffic on your network.
Internet access via VPN completely eliminates the risk of using an unencrypted local Wi-Fi connection that would expose you to cyber attacks.
On the other hand, proxy servers provide thousands of different IP addresses that allow users to make the same number of requests. In short, they are required to collect massive amounts of data.
If you want employees to work remotely from a secure environment while gaining access to company resources and confidential data, setting up a VPN is the ideal choice.
On the other hand, if you are more concerned about the sites your customers or users visit, setting up a proxy service is the best option.
In addition, VPNs and proxies are used in different situations, the former being more suitable for B2C (business client) and individual use cases.
Meanwhile, the latter is better suited for data collection, protecting businesses and brands from copyright infringement, enhancing corporate security and privacy, preventing theft of confidential information, monitoring brand reputation and mentions, or balancing traffic (by reducing server load) to save bandwidth.
Consequently, a proxy server will dramatically increase the speed of the corporate network, even reducing the bandwidth required to surf the Internet. VPNs, on the other hand, cannot do this.
What’s more, the home proxy creates multiple connections to different locations, perfect for brand monitoring and data collection.
The main advantages and disadvantages of a proxy
Proxy servers help to control and track company Internet use by allowing or blocking access to certain websites.
They also improve bandwidth utilization and overall network performance by maintaining local copies of websites and (CACHE), which helps when there are multiple requests for the same website.
As we discussed earlier, proxies also provide privacy and security by hiding the authenticity of the original request from the server. It also allows users to access blocked resources.
The main advantages and disadvantages of a VPN
VPNs will make your browsing history untracked by your service provider or even the websites you visit (yes, some websites may also keep a history of all the times you visit them).
In addition, as we have already established, they can hide the IP address and location, which allows you to bypass regional and restricted content.
Streamers can hide their location while streaming to prevent doxing. A VPN will also protect the data that you send and that is sent to your devices, so hackers won’t be able to access it.
Unfortunately, VPNs can also have performance and latency issues, depending on the distance between you and the nearest available server.
Since they use a local client to connect to the server, local memory and CPU issues can slow down the connection.
Website scraping with proxies: the key to a competitive business
Proxies are essentially gateways. They help automate business tasks (collecting or analyzing data) and can unlock huge data sources like Google, allowing you to overcome limitations like IP blocks, CAPTCHAS, etc.
As a business, you can use them in many cases such as SEO research, analysis, price aggregation, data collection, brand protection, or ad verification.
In addition, they offer the means to research competitors, extract profiles of potential employees from public sources, and more.
International companies can transcend national borders, allowing them to validate and cleanse localized data that is typically geographically protected.
Digital marketing agencies use proxy networks to manage their clients’ social media accounts on a daily basis.
Major e-commerce platforms like Skyscanner or Amazon also use proxy servers to store data and set competitive pricing in real time.
