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Your business customers count on you to keep low-tech threats from becoming high-pressure headaches, which is exactly what proxy anonymizers—software designed to hide IP addresses for surfing anonymously—can quickly become. These simple scripts enable even unsophisticated users to bypass the relatively sophisticated filtering technologies meant to control employee access to unauthorized Web sites. They're more widely available than ever before, just a simple search on Google, or looking on Facebook is all it takes; they can elude easy detection by IT staff, and they put the valuable data of your customers at ever-greater risk.
Proxy anonymizers work by hiding the IP address of a user's machine and functioning as the "system" that's actually making the Web request. Because this proxy isn't visible to the enterprise network, the Web filter can't flag any of the requests coming from it.
Not so long ago, only a handful of sites made proxy anonymizers available. Now, some estimates place the number in the tens of thousands. What's happened in the interim? The code has gone open source—which means just about anyone can create an anonymizer, upload it to a page they've created for free, and make them available for download to anyone who wants them, usually free of charge.
With the list of sites from which these simple scripts are available growing so quickly, enterprises have a problem. Blacklisting and URL blocking—the ordinary means of dealing with the issue—don't work, because there's just no way to keep a static list or database up to date.
There's also a behavioral factor at play here. Many of today's younger employees became acquainted with proxy anonymizers in high school or college, usually as a way to access social networking sites from school computers. They've since come to see these tools as an essential part of their computing experience, if not an inalienable right. And they don't see anything wrong with using them in the workplace.
So what does it all add up to? Employees have more ways to get to any site they want without fear of being caught. And that should raise a number of red flags for your customers. If employees are visiting unauthorized sites, they're opening the door to malware and viruses. They're raising the likelihood that sensitive corporate data will slip out and wind up in the wrong hands. They're putting your customers' compliance with regulations like HIPAA and SOX at risk. And they're exposing your customers to increased legal liability, as offensive content downloaded from these sites might find its way to other users.
One way to address the use of proxy anonymizers is to focus on educating employees. Your customers should inform employees of the risk proxy anonymizers pose—and the penalties for violating acceptable use policies and visiting unauthorized sites.
They should also back these efforts up with effective security technology, implementing a comprehensive approach known as Essential Information Protection™. Essential Information Protection helps companies control all the critical elements of Web, data, and messaging security, including:
Who is authorized to access specific Web sites, content, and applications
What data is most important to your organization
How to allow sensitive data to be communicated, and how online resources can be used safely
Where companies allow employees to go online, and where data can be sent safely.
Websense Essential Information Protection is based on best-in-class products and hosted solutions that provide powerful policy-based control to help your customers safeguard their most important data. And in an environment where proxy anonymizers are more widely available than ever, Essential Information Protection may be just what's needed to deal with this simple but serious security threat.
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