Having your website invaded by hackers is a risk for those who want to have their company on the internet. However, there are some ways to avoid as much as possible the attack of hackers to your page, and in this case the Reverse Proxy has been shown to be one of the most efficient solutions to solve this type of problem.
What is a Proxy Server?
A Proxy Server is an intermediary between the user and the web servers. It emerged from the need that people had to connect a local network to the internet, especially in places with computer networks.
The Proxy is the one who makes the connection between the information you want (which is on a server) and your computer.
Imagine that you work in a company where all computers are connected to a server. This server is the one who has access to the internet. He is the proxy server.
Example of a network with proxy server
To have access to the internet, all users need to go through the proxy that controls the internal network with the internet.
What is a Reverse Proxy?
Reverse Proxy is the exact opposite! Imagine you have a single interface connected to external servers.
Reverse Proxy forwards incoming network demand to a set of servers.
This is the only way for external requests on a given computer network, which can mean an increase in security, after all, instead of accepting connections from all sides, the web server receives requests only from one location and hides IP from the others. malicious attack servers;
As all external information passes through the Reverse Proxy, the Reverse Proxy server is able to handle all the information that circulates on the network and can offer:
- Threat protection;
- Spam protection;
- Encryption: SSL encryption can be delegated to the proxy instead of the internal servers;
- Load balancing: the server can distribute the load to multiple servers on the network;
- Cache: It can cache static content. In this way it helps to lessen the load on the web servers;
- Speed: Through this server, access can become faster as it compresses the content and can distribute this static content on CDN networks.
All users, robots (bots), Hackers access the site directly through the server. Enabling the server IP to be identified, and making attempts to attack and exploit server failures or ports. Most servers look to have a firewall right at this point.
In a network with Reverse Proxy , the ideal is to allow only encrypted connections to avoid data being intercepted during the data traffic on the network. In addition, the Reverse Proxy monitors all the data that is in transit, which allows the processing of this data. Whether by validating the origin of visits and preventing attacks, or avoiding the use of breaches on the server.
The main point is that it ends up being an extra protection between the internet and the server where your website is. That way, you can configure your server to only allow connections from the IP of your reverse proxy, and still hide the IP of your original server, in order to make direct intrusion attempts difficult! =)
Conclusion
Here, it is part of our development process, at the end of all our projects, we configure the Reverse Proxy server in order to reduce costs, reduce the pressure on the web server, increase security, shield the site, improve user experience with the benefit of increased site opening speed and optimizing the site’s positioning in search engines.
