Speed can make or break your business, and virtual private networks are one way to ensure your business doesn’t lose ground. As your business expands, it may grow to include multiple offices and locations. Keeping things running smoothly and efficiently requires that your employees have reliable and fast ways to share data and information. Employees in the field, such as salespeople, also need a secure and reliable method to connect to their office network. An excellent solution to the problem of establishing a secure long-distance network connection for your business is a virtual private network, or VPN. Here’s what you need to know about choosing a VPN server for your business.
What is a VPN?
VPNs create a secure connection between networks over the Internet, and protect the data traffic from prying eyes. While many businesses use VPNs to allow employees to access data resources locally while maintaining network security, they also provide efficient ways for businesses to share networked servers among multiple locations. VPNs essentially bottleneck data flow for authentication to prevent users without authorization from accessing your network, as well as check message integrity for evidence of alteration.
Security Benefits
The dangers of using a public network should give any business unsure of the value of VPNs pause. Setting up security configurations is delicate, and if they aren’t properly configured, your network can be a target for hackers, thieves or even just bored computer users within range of your company’s Wi-Fi. VPNs allow you to use public network infrastructure to secure connectivity with something as simple as a broadband connection to an ISP.
By using tunneling protocols and security measures such as encryption, VPNs provide a reliable model for network security. In addition, VPNs often use cryptographic tools such as passwords and digital certificates to authenticate users before a secure connection can be established. Some VPNs are capable of using biometrics to secure network access, as well.
Savings
Other than the obvious security benefits of using a VPN for your business, there are many other excellent, budget-saving reasons to consider a VPN for your business. Using a VPN will eliminate the need for leased lines and shrink the costs of long-distance telephone service. In addition, you can cut your own technical support costs by offloading them to your VPN provider. VPNs can help small businesses save up to 70 percent, compared to other remote-access networking solutions, and for networks outside the U.S., the savings can be a staggering 90 percent. To see if your local ISPs support VPNs, visit www.internetserviceproviders.com or a similar site.
Scalability
As an organization grows, so does the cost of creating a dedicated private network. A company with multiple offices quickly expands from needing one dedicated line to create a traditionally connected pair of offices, to needing six lines to connect four in a network. By using public lines and available network capabilities, VPNs solve this scalability issue for businesses.
If your company has employees who work remotely or have a need to collaborate securely, using a VPN becomes less of an option, and more of a responsibility. Take into consideration the structure of your business when building a virtual private network, but also anticipate the needs your business model will have in the future.
