Demystifying Explicit proxy

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Demystifying Explicit proxy

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xysoom

Posted 18 July 2023 - 06:19 AM

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Demystifying Explicit proxy

In today's cybersecurity threat landscape, organizations face numerous challenges in securing their networks and data. A critical aspect of every organization’s security strategy is ensuring secure and efficient outbound connectivity for users. This is where the Explicit proxy capability, available in network firewalls, emerges as a powerful tool to address these security concerns.To get more news about proxies, you can visit pyproxy.com official website.

Azure Firewall Explicit proxy feature is now available in Public Preview, and in this blog, we will explore the concept of Explicit proxy, discuss the problems it helps solve when used with Azure Firewall.
Understanding Explicit proxy

Azure Firewall operates in a transparent proxy mode by default. In this mode, traffic is sent to the firewall using a user defined route (UDR) configuration. The firewall intercepts that traffic inline and passes it to the destination.
An explicit proxy acts as an intermediary between client and server. With Explicit proxy enabled on Azure Firewall, client applications (such as a web browser) can point to Azure Firewall for proxy. As a result, HTTP and HTTPS traffic from the client application goes to the firewall's private IP address, is evaluated by the proxy and then a new connection to the destination is initiated by the proxy on behalf of the client/application.
You can manually configure the IP address on the browser application, or you can configure a proxy auto config (PAC) file. The firewall will host the PAC file to serve the proxy requests after you upload it to the firewall.
In this blog post we are using the Azure Portal to enable and configure the Explicit proxy feature. Follow the steps below to successfully enable Explicit proxy:

Step 1: Once you are logged into the Azure Portal, select your Azure Firewall Policy, and look for Explicit proxy on the left side menu.

Step 2: Then you will select “Enable explicit proxy” and define what ports will be used for HTTP and HTTPS.

Step 3: In case you want to use the proxy auto configuration (PAC) file, you first must upload the PAC file to a storage account container. A PAC file is a JavaScript-based configuration file used by web browsers to determine the listener on the proxy server to send HTTP and HTTPS traffic to and whether to use a proxy server for specific web requests. The file contains a set of rules that dictate the proxy server to be used for different types of URLs or domains.

Step 4: Once you have your proxy.pac file sent to the storage account, you will have to generate a SAS URL from the file.

Step 5: Then, on the Enable explicit proxy page, select “Enable proxy-auto configuration and configure the shared access signature (SAS) URL. Configure the port where the PAC is served from, and then select Apply at the bottom of the page.

Step 6: After enabling Explicit proxy, you must create application rules to allow or deny web requests from the clients using Azure Firewall as a proxy.