Read this blog to find out why Geo-IP blocking matters and how it can impact your business.
What Is Geo-IP Blocking?
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- Geo-IP blocking establishes digital boundaries to control who can access specific services or products online.
- Some content providers already use Geo-IP blocking due to licensing agreements, regulatory requirements, or business strategies. For example, streaming services like Netflix or Disney+ may restrict content availability based on regional rights.
How Does Geo-IP Blocking Work?
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- When you visit a website or service, it examines your IP address, which is linked to your geographic location.
- IP addresses are distributed regionally, serving as a primary indicator of where you are in the world.
- Sophisticated systems can enforce restrictions not only by country but even within smaller regions or cities.
- Rules based on location can restrict content access or redirect users to regional versions of a site.
How can Geo-IP Blocking help my business?
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- As a business, you can use Geo-IP blocking as a security method to protect the network and your users. Imagine that the credentials of a user were obtained through a phishing attack from another country, and the threat actor attempts to login with these credentials. We can help reduce the threat by using location blocking to only allow known and approved geographic locations and restrict this potential successful login.
- Identify the services you use that are accessible from outside your network, and whether you should restrict access on location. This could be a VPN connection, or access to a cloud application like Office 365.
- Consider looking at the outgoing traffic from your network and think about where the data is going from your network and if it is possible to restrict to certain geographic regions.
In summary, understanding geo-blocking is crucial for navigating digital content restrictions, and will assist you with securing your network, services, and critical data.
Author
Richard Huggins
Richard joined us in 1997 as an apprentice IT engineer conducting on-site installations of CAD workstations and Microsoft and Novell network environments. After a brief spell away to travel the world, he returned to work on our helpdesk supporting our CAD customers. In 2007, Richard was promoted to Support Services Manager and worked in this role until 2016 when he decided to acquire new skills and widen his IT industry knowledge and left to work as an Operational Manager for one of the UK’s Top 20 leading Information Security companies. In 2019 Richard once again returned to Symetri as Head of Support and Customer Success to further improve the Symetri customer support experience and is now responsible for the IT Solutions division.
