VPNs, or virtual private networks, are becoming increasingly common among everyone from basic users to full-fledged IT security experts. VPNs are a highly developed technology that began as an approach for IT professionals to provide secure remote access and link several office locations across the internet.
VPNs have evolved considerably in recent years, becoming one of the most popular and essential tools accessible to every privacy-concerned browser. Is this latest form of VPN good enough to help businesses?
Is a Virtual Private Network Right for Your Business?
Businesses frequently utilize VPNs to ensure that people outside their data centers are authorized and have access to an encrypted connection. They might use one to link their New York City headquarters with the field office in White Plains.
Setting up a VPN to engage remotely with the corporate, is an effective solution between the VPN-enabled routers in New York and White Plains, which IT establishes to interlink them.
This allows people in White Plains to see the entire corporate network as though they were in New York City without having to log in every time they want to access a server or app.
Even if your VPN provider does not provide the same level of security, it may still have a significant beneficial influence on your company’s overall data security.
We’ve put up a shortlist of four significant advantages that a virtual private network service may provide, especially for small and medium-sized businesses, to help you decide if it’s worth your time.
How Does A VPN Work?
What’s new about web-based virtual private networks is not the technology itself, but rather how it’s packaged for use. Every VPN essentially is a tunnel at its center; in fact, they’re frequently referred to as such.
Consider the internet to be a cloud, and then consider your online session of traffic as a long stream of bits crawling their way through that cloud to wherever you’re visiting—Google , Hulu, or Amazon.
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a technology that encrypts, or wraps, your internet connection and tunnels it through another nation’s network. It creates a secure “tube” for your data to travel through, keeping it safe from hackers and prying eyes. Is encryption a time-consuming procedure? Data encryption is used to safeguard it.
IT experts formerly used hardware-based solutions to set up VPNs, which frequently included both hardware and software. Your IT staff may have purchased a firewall or edge router that supported VPN tunneling at the hardware level if your company used a VPN.
They’d acquire the appropriate quantity of VPN software client licenses to cover the required number of users or websites. Because it began at the user’s device and concluded at your company’s router, every new VPN connection costs both hardware and software money to set up.
To utilize any VPN service, you must first download the VPN software. The software will then establish an encrypted tunnel as previously described, but it will do so using a server operated by the VPN supplier rather than your company’s data center router.
When a user is browsing the web or performing anything else in cyberspace, their browser will seem to come from the vendor’s server rather than their actual home PC or another gadget.
This is extremely important because it protects your identity, especially if you’re concerned about privacy issues such as a company or government tracking of your location or IP address, and the never-ending deluge of data miners dumped in cyberspace by marketing agencies.
With a VPN, no government or corporation can pry into your activities any farther than the provider’s data center locations. The capacity of the VPN supplier to or will tell authorities about your actions is up to them, and it’s something you should ask about before selecting one.
Four Reasons: Why VPN is Beneficial to Corporate
- Extremely Secured
Whether you need site-to-site tunneling or regular remote access provisioning, most firms will likely have two crucial characteristics in common. Whether it’s data or business apps, or both, you probably have resources on the cloud.
Second, you’re almost certainly working with remote or international personnel. A VPN service can assist you to stay safer without the need for costly data center-grade routing gear if your company has either or both of these qualities.
You’re essentially establishing a secure connection to whatever resource into which your users are logging, be it files stored on Dropbox Business or apps you’re providing through Microsoft Office 365 Business Premium.
Both of those options provide their own security features, but adding a VPN connection to your end can only make you and your business safer.
- Pricing & Affordability
Investing in a VPN service account for every user might be one of the most cost-effective IT investments small businesses can make, next to implementing effective managed endpoint security and utilizing a trustworthy web hosting provider.
When used with a business licensing plan, some VPNs are significantly less expensive than $10 per user each month. Given that data in transit is now protected by military-grade encryption, authentication, and access to web apps and services for this small amount, it’s not difficult to see why SMBs find value in VPNs.
- Reliable and Quick Remote Access
VPN software was used to provide access to any employee who needed to log into the data center from outside the office, whether at home or on the road. This is because all of the firm’s applications were in that data center, not just data.
Many businesses, particularly SMBs, do not need a data center nowadays since to the advent of web and cloud services like NordVPN and Salesforce Sales Cloud. Their apps are also hosted in the cloud.
If you find yourself in this situation, a personal VPN service allows your IT staff to set up a secure remote access network without having to spend money on pricey networking equipment.
This is especially true if you pick a VPN service that allows your IT professionals access to the data generated by their customers. Your IT experts will be able to see not only who uses their VPNs, but also for what purpose.
- Freedom of Surfing
If you’re talking about countries with tight internet controls, China is one that springs to mind. Because a nation is restricting access to a certain website or service, your users may be unable to use corporate resources across the open internet.
Even if your users are physically located in a non-free country, as long as their VPN service is available in those areas and is generally accessible, they will be able to browse the internet as though they were still in the United States. Although this benefit may only apply to a small percentage of SMBs, it’s important for those who require it.
However, in this case, you’ll want to be very familiar with your VPN provider’s privacy and logging regulations since they will have a lot of information to turn over should authorities contact them.
When you pick a VPN service that doesn’t maintain complete records, your IT staff may not be able to use the service as a major business would. You’ll need to read the provider’s Terms of Service thoroughly and then consult with your IT staff about what mix is ideal for your company.
