Andrius Palionis, VP Enterprise at Oxylabs tells SJUK the importance of cybersecurity and the latest technological developments in 2024.

The importance of cybersecurity is growing year by year.

Technological developments and breakthroughs in fields like artificial intelligence (AI) empower threat actors to conduct attacks on a grander scale and more efficiently.

Luckily, technological solutions can also be turned against cybercriminals to help protect businesses and individuals from cyber threats.

Defence and prevention start with reliable and timely threat intelligence.

Here, proxies are an invaluable resource.

When it comes to monitoring and protecting against cyber harms on a large scale and multiple fronts at once, a reliable proxy infrastructure is a crucial necessity.

The expanding cyber threat landscape

Ever since we started connecting our devices to networks, malicious actors designed ways to exploit vulnerabilities in these networks. Over the years, advancements in cybersecurity have made some types of attacks obsolete. However, on the whole, organizations are now menaced by an increased number of diverse threat actors equipped with a more extensive arsenal.

State actors threatening organisations

Cybersecurity experts are up against various types of bad actors.

Often, it will be individual hackers or organizations looking to profit. However, sometimes attacks are ideologically or politically motivated.

State-supported attacks against organizations in foreign countries have come to attention a decade ago.

In 2014, hackers backed by North Korea leaked film studio Sony’s internal data, including sensitive email communications, in order to prevent the release of a comedy film mocking the country’s regime.

Some former US officials argue that this attack not being taken seriously enough encouraged Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election when the Democratic National Committee was hacked.

Today, Russia’s state hackers are aggressively attacking governmental agencies across different continents.

Their sophisticated rapid-fire phishing attacks aim to extract useful governmental information that can be leveraged later.

However, as Sony’s attack shows, businesses can also be targets of state-sanctioned cyberattacks.

In the heating geopolitical climate, these attacks are only more likely.

Looming shadow of AI-powered attacks

The recent breakthroughs in AI have not gone unnoticed in the field of cybersecurity.

Valued at $24.3 billion in 2023, the global AI cybersecurity market is projected to reach $133.8 billion by the end of this decade.

AI tools can improve the efficiency of threat detection systems and reduce the number of false positives.

However, cybercriminals also use AI-based technology.

Currently, AI poses a significant threat due to its ability to create deepfakes – fake videos, images, and audio that depict real people saying or doing things they never did.

These fakes are leveraged in targeted phishing attacks, for example, by sending manipulated voice messages from the CEO to employees.

Generative AI (Gen AI) is also feared to soon contribute to AI-powered cybercrime.

Although IBM X-Force’s analysts have not found evidence of widespread usage of Gen AI in cyberattacks, they anticipate that such attacks will come once the adoption of AI in organizations reaches a critical level.

Fighting back with intelligence

As technological developments and turbulent international affairs expand the threat landscape, our primary weapon against the various kinds of bad actors is intelligence.

Here, two forms of intelligence are even more critical than artificial intelligence.

First, there is human intelligence, which requires alertness and knowledge.

It starts with all members of an organization being trained on the fundamentals of cybersecurity and their importance.

The more people are educated about how various bad actors will try to exploit them, the better they can resist.

Second, there is threat intelligence that analysts can work with and use to educate others.

Threat intelligence is detailed information about various cyber threats that could harm an organization.

This includes multiple data points covering different types of threat actors and their methods.

Technological solutions that bolster automation are vital when gathering such data on a large scale.

Premium proxies are an essential part of such data-collection infrastructures.

Why are proxies necessary for threat intelligence?

Proxy servers route traffic from the client device to the end server, providing the client with a proxy IP address in the process.

The main power of proxies becomes apparent when using very many IP addresses in large-scale automated operations.

Such operations often utilize IP addresses associated with different countries and service providers to unlock geo-specific content and avoid blocks.

One needs to do this when gathering threat intelligence from online sources.

In order to bring structure to collecting and analyzing cyber threat intelligence, it is considered at three levels: strategic, operational, and tactical. Proxies support extracting intelligence at all these levels.

Strategic level

At the strategic level, threat intelligence is used to understand the general threat framework.

It helps analyse potential threat actors, predict their possible actions, and prepare to counteract them. Strategic threat intelligence is global and multifaceted.

Factors that can impact the development of cyber threats range from political and economic events to regional, cultural, and societal elements.

Thus, extracting this intelligence involves tracking elections across the globe, gathering various financial data, monitoring migration and societal change, and much more.

To do this effectively, companies need a reliable proxy pool spread all over the world.

Only then can they unlock various data sources and gather real-time data at its peak relevance.

Operational level

Operational intelligence investigates the threat environment closer to home.

It looks at emerging cybercrime threats and the activity of known threat actors to track imminent danger to the organization.

Proxies are perfect for such monitoring.

Organizations and professional cybersecurity service providers utilize proxy infrastructure to scan for suspicious online activity, automatically check cyber incident reports, and extract relevant data from other public sources.

This information allows firms to adjust their defense mechanisms according to constantly evolving circumstances.

Tactical level

Threat intelligence at the tactical level is what you learn in action. It consists of data gathered from an ongoing attack or activity signalling that such an attack is about to be attempted.

The primary sources for tactical threat intelligence are internal tools comprising the firm’s cybersecurity system.

Proxies help service providers monitor multiple networks of their client companies and gather information about ongoing attacks safely and in real-time.

For example, proxies can be integrated into solutions for email verification across the globe to reduce the chance that a cleverly configured phishing link slips through.

In conclusion: outsmarting the bad guys

Bad actors of all sorts, from run-of-the-mill criminals to state agents, utilise technological developments to boost the effectiveness of cyber-attacks.

As the threats become more sophisticated and the threat environment itself more complex, organizations depend on how fast cybersecurity experts can harness and analyze relevant information.

A network of globally distributed proxy IPs supports effective data collection for cyber threat intelligence.

With proxies, governmental and non-governmental cybersecurity agencies can gather data from diverse online sources, including those administered by criminals.

Hopefully, proxies will inspire experts to find more ways how technology can help us outsmart bad actors.

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