Over the past half dozen years, proxy services have exploded onto the Internet. Many websites and bloggers now feature articles on general proxy usage as well as how-to articles on using a number of different tools to access anonymous proxies. Glype, CGIProxy, Tor, JonDo, and others.

What risks do these proxies pose to a website’s protected content?

Software that turns a website into an Anonymous Proxy Server is freely available for anyone to download. Every day new websites, with unrecorded IP Addresses, are popping up as new Anonymous Proxy Sites. Increased popularity, easy accessibility and the protection of anonymity has led to increased criminal activity.

With the ability to conceal their true identity proxy users have greatly lowered their risk of being caught, which in turn has fostered a culture of dangerous behavior.

Malicious proxy users can anonymously hack into networks through web portals and potentially cost the victim company millions of dollars in: stolen funds; lost trade secrets and research; repair costs; and an overall decline in consumer faith in the company. Additionally, anonymous proxies users can create spam email accounts, spam blogs and execute numerous other damaging attacks that have the ability to become very costly to correct.

Online fraud cases have involved proxy usage as high as 90% of the time.

Although no statistics have been published, off the record conversations with financial institutions have indicated that their online fraud cases have involved proxy usage as high as 90% of the time. It stands to reason that, if someone is planning a criminal activity and knows of a way to help cover their tracks, that person is going to use it. Not only does this mean that you can’t control who accesses your websites restricted resources, but you can’t even tell where they are coming from.

Generally, an organization isn’t concerned with who can access its public page. However, if you offer online banking or other financial services, employee or customer portals, or geographically-based content access, one malicious anonymous proxy user has the potential to create severe damage to your company with little risk to himself. Successfully detecting a potential attacker and denying them access to your website can help keep your company and consumers secure.