Partner Article

5 Reasons Your Business Needs a VPN

A VPN (virtual private network) is a private, secure connection to the internet. It works by scrambling and encrypting all of the information you send and receive online, keeping it safe and secure.

As our digital capabilities expand exponentially, it’s fair to say that more of our lives are conducted online. In both a personal and professional capacity, much of our sensitive information is just a click away – which also means it’s also easily accessible by cybercriminals. The threat to your online security is very real, we have all witnessed the varying degrees of impact and damage when it comes to recent hacking scandals. It is more crucial than ever to make sure you can protect yourself, your freedom and your business and using VPN technology can aid you with this. Below you will find 5 reasons why you should be using a Virtual Private Network.

You Want to Exercise Your Right to Privacy

As we have just mentioned, there is an ever increasing threat to our online security, and wanting to keep your online information and activities private is a right that you are entitled too. In many instances, VPN users are unfairly judged, and it is presumed that they are trying to hide questionable activities. While of course, in some instances this is a viable reason, the majority of people and businesses are using them because they take their digital security seriously. The media is rife with monetary and identity theft horror stories and data hacking scandals, doing all that you can to keep your business and personal information safe should be considered a smart move.

“The number one concern for businesses is that both the customer information and sensitive information is kept secure, as the world’s interconnectivity is increasing it becomes everyone’s responsibility to keep the information safe. Yusuf Yenegah, Director of Microbyte Solutions explains, “Sensitive information can be critical to fend off competition so creating a ‘cyber safe’ culture among your employees can put your business at a significant advantage”.

You Travel

Many countries worldwide can be restrictive about the content that is accessed and dictate what is viewed by their citizens. Most famously for censorship is China, news is censored and access to political views can be hit or miss. If you were searching for sites that would feature this information, its likely you will come across a pop up or a redirect that says “access denied by the ISP”. By using a VPN you are able to bypass political restrictions and catch up on the average, daily news that is relevant to you.

Using a VPN means that you can access popular media and entertainment channels such as Netflix or Amazon Prime by altering the IP address from a foreign one for a UK one. This means you can access these services as if you had never left the country!

They are also particularly handy if you need to access your online banking whilst on the move. While its good practice to notify your bank or credit card company that you are travelling, its possible it will slip your mind. If you were to log into your internet banking in a foreign country, it could be flagged and a worst case scenario? You could be locked out - the same has been known to happen with PayPal! Using a VPN, you are able to connect to the relevant server, you can connect through your home country and save the headaches.

Scott Roberts, Founder of Systematicapps offers his experiences “As a business owner I have a need to operate my business from various locations at home in the UK and abroad. The need to have a VPN becomes more realised when you start traveling to certain countries that may be known as a security risk. From a security aspect a VPN virtual private network adds a layer of security with any information transferred in and out of your devices. You can be conducting business abroad but your computers internet traffic is encrypted and being routed through a server in London. This is not just about covering you from security issues abroad, public WiFi supplied in coffee shops for instance are also is a security risk. This all reduces the risk of Man in the middle attacks, where someone could be sitting in the middle of your laptop and the Internet seeing and capturing everything you are doing. Having this peace of mind when working with sensitive and confidential client information is essential when running my business.”

You Use VoIP

VoIP technology has advanced tremendously over the last decade, and many businesses are now implementing it due to its low cost and high quality offerings. But as cyber criminals also advance at the same rate as technology, it’s possible that VoIP services may be exploited with malicious intent.

VoIP works by converting analogue conversations into digital packets of data, meaning that its possible for our conversations to be heard and recorded by those with the aforementioned malicious intent. Many of our businesses discussions contain some degree of sensitive information that you wouldn’t be comfortable discussing with just anyone.

There are two reasons that you should consider a VPN with VoIP. By using VPN tunnelling alongside VoIP services means that the converted data packets will be encrypted and coded, preventing anyone being able to intercept the conversations and keeping your business secrets and strategies safe.

Along with this safety aspect, comes the improved quality. Often you will find that VPN tunnelling is given priority through routers, improving call quality and reliability.

You Use Public Wifi

A plethora of businesses now offer free public wifi, using in return for capturing your precious data. NOTE – free, unsecured public wifi. The very essence of public wifi is that its public, and you are sharing the network with many others, putting you and your data at risk.

There are methods you can use to protect the information you are viewing or sending. Turning off file and printer sharing and network discovery on your device will prevent anyone from being able to access them. Another tip is to make sure you are vigilant about the sites that you are visiting, look for ‘https’ in the toolbar – this indicates that the site has an active SSL certificate and is a secure connection for financial transactions and data transfers. If a site does not have the ‘https’, exit immediately. You can also take extra care an SSL encrypt your email to prevent them from being accessed and read.

It doesn’t take an experienced hacker to access your device on a public wifi hotspot, and they will be able to view anything you have sent or received, the sites that you have visited, and even the passwords that you log in with. In this instance, a VPN will encrypt your data from prying eyes and hide your activity, keeping you safe in the various hot spots on offer.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Rebecca Moore .