February 23, 2021
The popularity of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) has never been made so clear as they were when the pandemic hit earlier in 2020. Enterprise VPN usage surged by as much as 87% during a time when organizations desperately needed a proven way to keep their increasingly decentralized workforce efficient, productive and secure. Today we’re going to take a closer look at VPNs and help you decide whether your organization should be making use of them in 2021, if you’re not already.
What’s bad about VPNs?
First, let’s talk about the negative aspect of VPNs. The main issue and most glaring problem with the industry today is that you don’t always know what you’re getting. Companies that run them have few enforceable standards and no oversight agency. This means that VPN providers can make all sorts of brazen claims with no regulation to keep them in check. The dozens of companies currently on the market have headquarters around the globe, making any type of oversight that much more challenging. As a result, it’s hard for most users to tell the difference between them. To make matters worse, there’s been a series of recent cyber breaches that have reignited the debate about the inherent vulnerabilities of VPNs. On the positive side, we’re qualified to assist you in making the determination of which service is best suited for your particular needs. We can also configure these services for you in order to make them as secure as possible.
What’s good about VPNs?
There are reasons for organizations to still use and trust modern VPNs — as opposed to legacy VPN technology that causes many of the currently known issues. For starters, some enterprise VPNs offer connectivity resilience, insulate applications from instabilities in networks, and enable connected devices to roam seamlessly between Wi-Fi and cellular networks without user intervention. Additionally, some advanced VPNs employ traffic optimization via intelligent compression to automatically fine-tune connection performance so that essential business applications run reliably across networks, giving priority to mission-critical applications. While digital security is increasingly called into question, enterprise VPN’s do offer network security and data protection safeguards that are absent from many consumer-grade options. We can help you make the most of them.
Should you use a VPN in 2021?
That’s the underlying question, isn’t it? Can you still safely trust VPNs in 2021? Do we still recommend them?
The best answer we can give is, you have options. No system is foolproof, and VPN isn’t the only remote working solution out there. Most importantly, we can help you make the determination of whether you should go with a different route. But strictly concerning VPN, the modern VPN tech that is available is quite good. When you connect directly to the internet, your activity and data — from business emails to banking transactions — is exposed to the possibility that someone else can see it, exploit it or steal it. That’s why a VPN can still be considered an essential business tool. Its primary function is to allow users to securely access a private network and share data remotely through public networks. The idea is to create a secure third-party barrier between your computer and the internet — a tunnel that prevents hackers and other cybercriminals from seeing your data or activity.
Despite the potential pitfalls, establishing a secure and trusted VPN connection is not difficult — with the right IT support.