Working From Home? Get A VPN to Safeguard Your Business Data

It is a known fact that when you allow your employees to work remotely from home, the chances of security compromise increases manifold. However, it’s a trade-off you have to do between security and employee convenience which has a direct impact on employee performance as many KPIs (key performance indicators) have proven over the years.

You know how important it is to protect corporate data. When working remotely, the employees have to depend on public networks oftentimes which don’t have the best security protection features that your office intranet has. Loss or theft of data could mean a loss of face and reputation for the employee and the company. In addition, sensitive business data may also get traded with your competitors, which means arming them with your business secrets giving them an undue advantage in the market. This could set you back by a few years.

That is why you have to ensure that the connection between the end destination i.e. your company network and the point of origin which is the device and the server used by your employee while working from home is absolutely secure and impregnable.

An incredible solution to a difficult problem

Virtual Private Networks or VPNs allow you to complete mask your IP address, keeping you anonymous and untraceable while also creating a tunnel between the start and the end destination through encryption of the network. It is a security service which when used, keeps your corporate data protected within the tunnel.

So, if your home network is anonymous, your final destination i.e. the company network is fool-proof against hacking attempts and the path is hidden within a tunnel, it becomes resilient to malware attacks and snooping attempts. The higher the amount of encryption, the more difficult it becomes to break the VPN protection down using brute force attacks.

The only problem of a VPN connection is that your operator or others using the same VPN network can snoop or collect your private or sensitive data. If you can ensure that the company doesn’t maintain a log or share your data with a third-party, you can be more or less sure that your business data is almost fully safe.

Advantages of using VPN when working remotely using your home/ BYOD environment

Limited, role-based access to a user: One of the biggest advantages of allowing a per-user basis access is that you won’t need to give access to all of your business details and data that a user doesn’t need to be privy to for his operations. This means, whenever, a user is requesting for access to the company network, you as the admin can authenticate the identity of the user and decide whether to allow or deny access. So, the company network is fully secure.
Even if data is stolen, it doesn’t have any use: Firstly, as mentioned above, it is almost impossible to break into the tunnel-shaped path of data transmission and steal data. However, even if some important business data is stolen, due to powerful encryption, it is near-impossible to decipher the actual meaning and use it for wrong purposes.
Can be used from a wired, unwired home network or public network: A VPN service is available everywhere. So, any device which has been authenticated and given permission can be used by an employee or a manager while sitting inside a room of his home or from a public place.

Conclusion

VPN networks offer a brilliant solution to a serious problem experienced by most businesses. If proper personal security protocols and rules are followed sincerely, you can almost minify the chances of security lapses to zilch.