Anonymous Proxies Remain a Major Concern for IT Managers

There's little surprise in this new report showing that 64% of IT managers consider anonymous proxies as a security threat. There's also a large increase in the volume of anonymous proxies on the Internet, and traditional web filtering using URL databases seems ineffective at blocking access to these anonymous proxies.

The idea behind an anonymous proxy is that you can point your browser explicitly to an anonymous proxy, and it will let you bypass your corporate or enterprise proxy, which typically would be blocking you from social or recreational websites like youtube or myspace, and preventing you from downloading any malware or viruses. No wonder IT managers find anonymous proxies to be a security threat.

If traditional web filtering using URL databases is ineffective at blocking access, then what's a proxy administrator to do? The only truly effective way to block an anonymous proxy is real time rating of a web address. Without real time rating, anonymous proxies appear and disappear too quickly to make it on to a URL database. The proxy administrator just needs to make sure the real time rating system they use is effective at recognizing anonymous proxies, and that a category exists to create policy to block anonymous proxy access.