In the light of the recent cyber-attacks that not only terrified individuals but caused huge damage to large corporations like Adobe, Sony and many others. Almost every month we hear of cybercrime instances; from DDos muggings to the exploitation cybersecurity, cyber-attacks have become a growing threat for all. Recently, the data breach at a US-based legal firm resulted in the theft of major client and employee’s information, including their emails, social security number, personal information’s and their banking details. With Covid-19, businesses are not operating online, and the meetings are organised through the online apps like zoom, google meet and many others; thus, while using the open and free platforms like zoom, one needs to be extra careful. You need to find a solution that can allow you to conduct your zoom meetings in a secured environment.
Thus, to maintain a double layer of online safety and facilitate the work from home culture, companies have today endorsed the support of a VPN app or service.
What is a VPN?
VPN or Virtual Private Network is typically a secured tunnel through which all the data that is sent from one device to another is encrypted. Further, each packet of data is put into another packet, to provide further security to the information. These packets are hard to break and difficult to steal, thus in all circumstances, your online activity remains private and secured.
Why do we need a VPN?
From Govt organisations, advertisers to the cybercriminals, everybody want to know, what you do online. They want to capture every bit of your information and use it to their advantage. This unethical eves-dropping has been a major part of our online life and without even knowing we share a lot of our personal information, that is used by a third party for their own benefit. A VPN can save you from the third eye, it keeps your ISP in the dark so that your activities remain untraceable. The use of VPN is even more important, while you are latched on to a public Wi-Fi, where the level of data protection is almost zero.
Here are 3 ways a VPN works:
1. It camouflages your IP address and your actual location.
2. The data shared by you on the internet passes through a secured tunnel where it undergoes the process of encryption. This encryption provides a security layer to your data, that is hard to understand or break.
3. The VPN segregates your internet data into small capsules, the data then passes through a secured private tunnel that takes the info to the webpage you requested.
How to select the best VPN?
A Good VPN does not come for Free
This is the first and most important rule, if you are a regular traveller, then you are sure to bump into many free VPN offers but mind it no good things come for free. Research on the best VPN providers as per your need. Check if they have their servers in a location you desire, read customer reviews and then before onboarding a VPN vendor ask for a 14-day free trial. If you are satisfied with the trail, go ahead, pay the price a reserve your online security.
Count the offerings
To get the best deal, you need to read between the lines. The service offerings will contain all the answers. Check for the following:
# The number of servers the vendor provides
# The number of unique IP addresses it provides
# Number of countries it covers,
# How many devices can it connect simultaneously?
# Is it compatible to run on all devices?
# What is the speed it offers?
# Is it easy to use?
# At what price is it offering all these services?
# Does it offer free trial?
# Do not sign up with a VPN vendor if it does not offer Kill Switch.
The Final Word:
Technological innovations are a trend these days, VPN is the most appropriate security option for those who deal with heavy risk data online. However, with the growth of cloud-based servers, the other alternative to VPN is proxy chaining, here the network creates multiple proxy IPs and, in this way, it marks the identity of the real IP. Well! VPN, for now, is easy to use and is seen to deliver the best results in most scenarios. However, the success of your VPN will depend on your selection of the correct VPN provider, thus follow the rules stated in this article and secure your online journey with a VPN.
