How To Prevent Man In The Middle Attacks With A Rotating Proxy

With so much of our daily work done online these days, it has become even more important to keep our work and businesses safe from attacks. With businesses handling large quantities of sensitive data, a common threat is the man in the middle (MITM) attack. Companies have a ton of security issues to keep track of, but this one is a pretty big one as well. A MITM attack can compromise a ton of information and private conversations if they’re able to get in the middle of two people transferring files and discussing extremely sensitive matters. For your business’s security, it’s important to learn how to prevent man in the middle attacks.

The man in the middle attack definition is basically that it is a more sophisticated way of eavesdropping, sort of like when phone tapping became a common practice after the spread of the use of the telephone. As a boss, you want to make sure that all of your employees are able to conduct their work in an efficient but secure fashion. In this article, we’ll go over a few strategies to teach you how to prevent a main in the middle attack. You can click around the table of contents to find the best starting point for you and your business’s needs.

What is a Man in the Middle Attack?

In a basic sense, a man in the middle attack is very much what it sounds like—a person in the middle of two people talking is collecting their information without their consent. The two people communicating may think they are talking directly to one another, maybe even over a private connection, but the “man in the middle” is relaying their messages and collecting the information themselves. A MITM attacker has to circumvent mutual authentication and work through other security measures you might have in place to stop them from getting through.

The reason these are so bad is probably quite obvious to business owners. When employees are discussing company matters and sending files to each other, you don’t want anyone finding that information and using it for nefarious reasons. MITM attackers can gain access to conversations from an unencrypted Wi-Fi network.

Many MITM attacks originate from traps in the form of Wi-Fi hotspots, most likely in a location where an employee would need quick access to Wi-Fi, like a coffee shop or an airport. The malicious Wi-Fi hotspot will have a name that looks like it belongs to a nearby coffee shop or the airport lounge—wherever you’re trying to work and find a good connection. When employees are working on the go, they have to be extra careful about how to prevent man in the middle attacks. Since remote work is much more of a reality and standard in companies today, managers have to be aware of this hacking possibility and help train employees to guard against it.

If you’re wondering how to detect a man in the middle attack, it can get pretty technical, but it’s not impossible. If you’re concerned that a conversation between employees fell victim to a man in the middle attack, you can analyze the difference in the times between a sent message and a received message. If they took longer than they usually do, this could be a sign of a third-party attacker.

While everything on the Internet seems instantaneous and untraceable to us, there are a lot of footprints left behind. If you wanted to bring in an expert to do a network forensic analysis to determine the source, they would look into the IP address of the server, DNS name of the server, and the X.509 certificate of the server. This is a difficult area of expertise, so unless you have someone like that at your company, it’s better to take steps to prevent a man in the middle attack before it happens.

How to Prevent MITM Attack

There are general steps you can take to make sure your employees are more aware of security protocols and more involved in man in the middle attack defense. When employees are more aware of your company’s security strategy, they’ll be able to play a more active part in defending sensitive company information from malicious actors. We’ve talked about this in relation to data breaches on the blog as well. MITM attacks can be insidious in a variety of ways, from collecting cookies to hijacking email to browser attacks that send users to fake pages and get malware installed on their computers.

In general, you should always direct employees to use a secure connection when they’re transferring large packets of data or having a confidential conversation about the company with another employee. You want to set up a model of security and expect employees to follow it. However fallible it can be, making sure that security and the knowledge of how to prevent man in the middle attacks is front-and-center in the employee handbook is a good idea.

Another easy step is to make sure all large files and sensitive information are encrypted when sent between employees. This could feel like an annoying step, but it’s much better than everything getting stolen and distributed. It can become second nature, like two-factor authentication.

Even though these steps for security and main in the middle attack defense should be a part of your regular routine, employees will have to work on the go or work remotely and can’t always guarantee the safety of the Internet connections they’re using. In order to make sure you’re not susceptible to a MITM attack, you should consider using a MITM proxy.

Using a MITM Proxy to Prevent Attacks

A MITM proxy is a great way to ensure that your employees are connecting safely even when you’re not able to directly monitor the security of the ISP. Even if your employees are well-versed in online security, they’re not totally infallible. Getting a MITM proxy for employees is the perfect way to instill greater confidence in your security.

To deal with man in the middle attacks, you’ll need a man in the middle attack HTTP(S) proxy. HTTP(S) is a proxy protocol because it has SSL encryption (that’s what the S stands for), and you need that for a secure proxy. Employees can connect through this proxy, whether on their computer or their mobile device and be more assured in the work they take with them.

However, instead of providing one proxy for everyone to use, you should invest in a rotating proxy for every employee who’s handling highly sensitive, confidential information. A rotating proxy provides a clean, unused IP address as often as they need. This also makes it much harder for malicious actors and MITM attackers to track your information and peg it to your IP address since it’s always changing.

Find the Best MITM Defense and Proxy for Your Business

Rayobyte takes security as seriously as any other company, so that’s why we provide the best proxies and services we can to ensure your security. If it sounds like a big investment to get rotating proxies for all of your employees handling sensitive information, it’s basically nothing compared to dealing with the aftermath of a MITM attack. If you invest in a proxy and learn how to prevent man in the middle attacks before they occur, you won’t have to deal with the arduous fallout.

The Corporate and Enterprise plans can offer a ton of proxies and let you save on the overall package. Rayobyte is committed to working with you on your proxy needs, especially for managing and securing a large volume of data. That’s why we have 24/7 customer service and servers around the globe—we can address any problem as soon as it comes up. With end-to-end control of our hardware, we can also ensure we’ll be able to address any security issue before it becomes a problem for everyone.

When looking for a good proxy provider, you have to understand why it’s so important to have a good security plan. It will make your business overall safer and let your employees do better work from wherever they need to.

Final Thoughts

Cybersecurity is a huge issue for companies these days. As technology advances, so do the methods to break in and steal the files and data that we need to house on that technology. Making sure all of your employees are involved in the security strategy is a great step towards man in the middle attack prevention. At the same time, a MITM proxy is a great extra step in how to prevent man in the middle attacks. Employees can be secure in all of their conversations and data-sending with other employees and just be able to focus on doing good work instead of being constantly fearful of cyberattacks.

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