Do I need a VPN?

Ok so technical audience in my network please forgive me but in the same fashion as my last article on data protection and looking after that precious data whilst working in your new workspaces at home.

I have been asked by a number of friends not in the IT world what is a VPN and why or do I need one? There are two angles to consider here,

If you are accessing data from within your work environment, then you are most likely going to be using a VPN connection that has likely been configured by your IT team prior to having to work from home.

The second is just in general you are concerned that you are using public Wi-Fi maybe and security and privacy is important to you.

What is a VPN?

A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a connection method to provide security and privacy to public and private networks. Things like your local coffee shop and the free public WIFI there for example. VPNs are mostly used by corporations to protect sensitive data.

There are other reasons for VPN but I am not going to divulge those here, what I will say is there are VPNs available across the globe and they may just allow you act as if you are in the country that you are connecting to.

Security

By far the biggest reason for using a VPN is security, if you do not use a VPN when you are on the internet in your favourite coffee shop be warned that your data is so very easily accessible by ways and means and this leads to the hacking of information.

But I hear you cry I thought I had this big wall of fire (firewall) protecting me from all those nasty hackers (not the good hackers they don’t do anything wrong) right. The firewall is going to be protecting your data while on the computer whereas a VPN protects your data on the internet.

VPNs use advanced encryption protocols and secure tunnelling techniques to encapsulate all online data transfers.

Ok. You have scared me enough

Who said that? Joking, as I said in my previous article your data is extremely precious well, I hope it is or why do you have it? You should be considering the backup of that data for starters but then how do you also protect it from additional threats further. A VPN is another good angle to take there.

Veeam Powered Network (VeeamPN)

Yep, you probably guessed it by now another FREE product from Veeam. Firstly, this networking stuff is not designed usually to be easy in facts it’s still the most complicated aspect of my day to day job.

This tool though massively simplifies that and allows you to connect to your desired VPN without too much hassle.

Here is the message to the IT Teams that maybe require some easy network connectivity back into your environment, this will work for you to.

You will find a ton of information in the link below.