The secrets of VPNs for business

Secure access to your network isn’t something to be taken lightly.

- Steve Cassidy

If you’re not certain if you need a virtual private network (VPN), or how you’d go about setting one up, that’s okay. Those three little letters represent  a minefield around terminology, compatibility, even legality: ask the younger generation what VPNs are for and they’ll think of anonymous, untraceable access to the shadier corners of the internet. Or, they might picture hackers and ransom-demanding pirates taking control of their victims’ machines.

Those bad people are using a VPN, since technically the term can mean any encrypted, encapsulated link from one internet address to another. That says nothing about what it’s used for, what it can or can’t do, who owns it or whether it’s even working. What attracts the bad guys to such technology is the fact that no-one can peer into the data that moves inside those encrypted packets – although the source and destination addresses aren’t encrypted, so it’s always going to be apparent that a link is active.This is why business VPN solutions generally offer extensive security features: the value of the proposition lies in its impenetrability.

Unfortunately, as a result, the marketing spiel can lean towards impressive-sounding gobbledegook, intended to bamboozle senior management types simply looking for “the most secure VPN we can buy”. If you want to make the right choice, you need to start by understanding what’s possible. Then you can choose a way to do it – and stay on top of the accompanying security obligations.

The benefits of a VPN