Is Your VPN Really Secure Enough to Ensure Your Privacy?

Virtual private networks have become integral to the safety of both businesses and even individual users, but we want to use today’s blog to clear up some of the misconceptions about what a VPN can do and what a VPN cannot do. You’ll find this information helpful for keeping your business as secure as can be.

First, let’s take a look at what a VPN is and what it can do to keep your business safe; then, we will transition into what you can’t expect from your VPN.

What is a VPN?

A VPN uses encryption to create a secure “tunnel” between the data you are accessing and the device being used to access it. VPNs are incredibly important in today’s remote and hybrid work environment, as without them, data can potentially be stolen or observed by external parties. This is why you see so many organizations using VPNs; businesses want to ensure that their data’s integrity is preserved.

This shouldn’t be confused with consumer-grade VPNs that you see advertised online. While these VPNs are designed to protect your privacy while you surf the web, free consumer-grade VPNs tend to log activity (even when they claim they don’t) and paid consumer VPNs really don’t serve that much of a purpose for a business.

A business VPN allows employees to securely tunnel into your office network so that the data that goes back and forth is encrypted and secure.

What Can It Do?

There are many reasons to invest in a VPN. Here are a few:

• Securing your data while using public networks
• Reducing online tracking and enhanced privacy
• Limiting ISP monitoring and bandwidth throttling
• Limiting geo-tracking
• Accessing region-locked content

What Can’t It Do?

VPNs are wonderful tools to enhance your business’ privacy and security, but there are certain things that they cannot do. While some of these might be common sense, we still need to emphasize this to any user of a VPN, whether it’s for business-related or personal purposes.

• Protecting from various threats
• Improving password strength
• Engaging in illegal activity

Want to Get Started with a VPN?

SCW wants to help your business improve its data privacy and security through the use of a VPN. We know that working remotely or in a hybrid situation can be difficult, so you should not have to worry about security and privacy on top of the other frustrations that come with it. To find out more about our VPN solution, reach out to us at (509) 534-1530.