IP Rotation — Automatically changing a user’s visible IP address on a regular basis ensures that target websites cannot build up any patterns of activity or identify the users as anything but typical visitors to the website. One advantage of IP rotation is that it can be implemented so as to be transparent to the end users. In a typical set up, a secure, Virtual Private Network (VPN) network router is attached to the enterprise network. All of the company’s outbound Internet traffic is then rerouted to a platform that periodically changes the IP address used for the subscribers’ network. A Network Access Translation module (NAT) dynamically controls what IP address is presented to the outside world.

This type of solution is best suited for organizations that perform a significant amount of competitive analysis on the Web and need to covertly access competitive or industry Web sites without their knowledge. To maintain security and operational controls, IT organizations should determine how many users will be allowed to tunnel through this VPN at any given time and who should have access, whether executives only, the analysts or its entire user community.

IP Explosion — IP Explosion works by distributing the automated activity across a huge number of IP addresses. The key is to ensure that the traffic from any given source address is low enough to appear normal.

This system is ideal for any government organization or business enterprise that uses Unstructured Data Management tools to conduct automated Web harvesting research. Typically the system causes each Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) network connection to go out on a randomly selected IP address from a pool of thousands of addresses.

When using automated tools to gather large volumes of information – such as capturing competitive pricing information –, it is not enough to simply hide the identity of the user. The simple pattern of generating such a large number of queries from a single address in a short time is enough to expose the activity, even if the user cannot be identified. IP Explosion prevents this pattern from from occuring.


Never get complacent

Computer identity is something many organizations take for granted each time an employee logs onto the Internet. The ease of accessing information on the Web has created a false sense of security that can be exploited by business competitors using new and powerful tools at their disposal. Just as companies woke up to the threat of viruses, cookies, and spyware a few years ago, these enterprises must now become more aware of the threats imposed by Internet counter-intelligence. The only way to circumvent this threat is to completely protect enterprise user identities through anonymous Web surfing systems, making this a new requirement while online.