Since the business world is getting more vast, with more people committing resources which often times run into millions of dollars, and black hat hackers going the extra mile to acquire the technical know-how that’ll confer on them the ability to hack into networks of firms and businesses, it becomes absolutely necessary for business setups to do everything possible to stay safe.
To cite a few examples: the United States publicly opened up that state sponsored hackers from North Korea were responsible for the Sony Hack in 2014, notwithstanding the high level of security the US is known of. Seoul confirmed that North Korean-linked hackers were behind the digital theft of $81 million from Bangladesh’s Central Bank.
If countries and multi-million organizations can suffer such high-level cybercrimes, there’s no reason a business should not go the extra mile to ensure that its data and finances are well secured.
This single reason has made VPNs become useful tools that provide a handful of features to increase internet privacy and anonymity in business transactions, especially in these times where even internet service providers can sell your browsing history for profit.
For a mega or flourishing business outfit, the extra monthly bill that will be caused by the paid VPN can definitely be covered, the main problem is for a small business that could be struggling with IT costs. For such an organization, there is the option of free VPN service providers.
Free VPNs have been touted as double-edged swords, in that they are not completely trustworthy. The underlying word is that they might log and sell your data. In as much as this can be true, it has not been ascertained and should not be seen or taken as a norm.
It will be in the best interest of a small business to have the minimal amount of privacy offered by free VPNs, than to leave the belly unprotected for a sucker punch that may come from hackers at any time.
It may be said that most free services are dangerous to use. Recent studies carried out have, however, shown that there are some genuine free VPN service providers out there. These free VPNs are said to offer good and competent services, though they still advise and encourage their users to upgrade to paid plans in order to enjoy more benefits.
Genuine free VPNs, in reality, are not keen in competing with the paid VPNs. They more or less see their effort as doing all that is possible to rid the business circle and the world at large of the threat from attackers.
For this very generous and gallant stride, they should be rather encouraged. No person or organization of repute will on purpose allow intellectual materials that are prized possessions all over the world to exchange hands just for a few bucks.
VPNs, both paid and free, proclaim the no logging policy - meaning that they will not sell any data in their custody. A VPN that logs and sells data is a hacker at heart and has definitely compromised the purpose for which it was set up.
What should rather concern and bother any small business is to ensure that the VPN being subscribed to has the potentials for improved security for data exchanges and that if data is intercepted, it will be encrypted and will not be readable to outsiders.
It should also be pointed out to the advantage of a small business setup that the free VPN they are being subscribed to is purely unique to the user, unless the user followed a specific model to set up their VPN.
Also, the security mechanism to protect the data and authentication methods to allow the tunneling of the data to be transferred cannot be short circuited by any provider.
If these points are established in any free VPN’s terms of use, any small business that subscribes to it can equally enjoy the same online security from the free VPN provider as can be expected from a paid VPN.
In conclusion, in as much as a free VPN is bound to differ from a paid VPN in a way or two, it will not amount to asking for too much to say that some amount of trust should be extended to any free VPN service provider that has successfully built a competent reputation for itself.
Joseph Chukwube is a young tech enthusiast and an experienced content marketer. He is the Founder/CEO at Real SEO Growth, a link building agency, and Dream Chase Achieve, a lifestyle and self-improvement blog.