In today’s world, going to work doesn’t always mean driving to the company building. Not every employee is sitting in an office or a line of cubicles.
Instead, many employees work from home. They have an office right in their house but still need to be connected to whatever company they work for. You will also find many workers take their work home with them after hours or on the weekend. Sometimes there is just not enough hours in a day to finish everything up.
So what do these employees do if they need to access the company’s network from anywhere but the office? Not only that, how can the company guarantee the connection to the system is secure and that no one outside the link can get in?
That is where a VPN comes into play. Let’s take a look at what a VPN is, how it works and why a company needs VPN apps to provide security for remote access employees.
What is a VPN?
First things first, what is a VPN? It stands for virtual private network and is a way to secure an internet connection. Basically, you take a public, open network and make it as secure as possible to the user accessing the connection.
For example, if you go to a coffee shop that offers free Wi-Fi that is a public network. You can access all you want. However, you cannot guarantee the connection is safe, or if the Wi-Fi is indeed from the coffee shop (you can change the Wi-Fi name to whatever you want). So as soon as you connect to the internet, your device is vulnerable to prying eyes that can see what you are doing and access personal information on your device.
A VPN creates a tunnel in which it encrypts the data that flows through it to the network. It makes it so that you are invisible on the network. So those prying eyes can no longer see what you are doing.
A VPN also allows you to access content that you are unable to get in specific regions. So if you are trying to stream something online that is in a particular country, you can still use it even if you are somewhere else.
Why Have it For Remote Employees?
If you have an employee that is working from home or are a large company with multiple workers in different areas, they still need access to the company’s network. Since they are not in the building that has the server, they need a different way to gain access.
A remote-access VPN can get your employee connected to the company’s server through a remote computer network. It works as if the employee is in the building directly plugged into the system. The downside to remote access is it leaves your server vulnerable to hackers and cybercriminals because the connection isn’t secure.
That is where the VPN comes in handy. It takes that open, unsecured connection and closes it off to anyone other than the employee access the server. That tunnel the VPN creates for the data blocks anyone else from trying to access the system that shouldn’t be. Without it, your company is exposed and vulnerable to cyber-attacks and personal information potentially compromised.
Your employees can now access the central server of their workplace anywhere, anytime. Not only that, they can access it securely. So if they decide to take work home and hang out at the local coffee shop, your remote-access VPN will allow that.
So if you are a company that has evolved as much as technology has and your employees don’t work in an office, a VPN will be your friend. Secure your employees and your business with a VPN.
