Likely Normal

Happy Halloween.  It’s time for another monster comic, this time from another country. Speaking of other countries, your mother probably told you to avoid certain areas of town.  Well, cybersecurity guys say the same thing about regions of the world. Our advice is, if you don’t do business there, block it.

Without geoblocking, it’s basically a free-for-all—botnets from who-knows-where, brute-force attacks from script kiddies in their basement, and enough suspicious login attempts to make your SIEM weep. But with geoblocking? Suddenly, the huge swaths of the Internet who have no business trying to connect to you are blocked at the door.

Yes, occasionally a legitimate user gets caught in the crossfire (“Why can’t our CFO log in from his ‘working vacation’ in the Caymans?”), but that’s the price of keeping out the 99.9% of traffic that’s just automated attacks looking for an easy mark. Geoblocking is like putting up a “No Soliciting” sign—sure, the occasional Girl Scout might miss out on selling you cookies, but at least you’re not drowning in spammy SSH attempts from IPs that haven’t been patched since Windows XP was cool.

And let’s not forget the sheer elegance of watching a WAF drop traffic at the edge like a bouncer tossing out troublemakers before they even reach the bar. “Oh, you’re a known malicious actor from a country we’ve blacklisted? How about… no?” Meanwhile, your actual customers waltz right in, blissfully unaware of the cyber-ninjas you just vaporized on their behalf.

So yes, geoblocking might seem harsh—until you realize it’s the reason your servers aren’t currently part of a botnet mining Bitcoin for some guy in a basement halfway across the world. It’s not paranoia if they’re actually out to get you.