Busy offices can often use a virtual private network (VPN) designed to keep data private and safe. Since data is the lifeblood of most modern businesses, this makes sense for a lot of different types of companies, from small business offices to large corporate networks. The VPN is widely considered a best practice in business security.

What is a VPN?

The virtual private network is often described as a sort of digital ‘tunnel’ encrypting data as it moves from point A to point B.

As we’ll talk about a bit later, that usually involves encrypting data from a point of origin where someone is working remotely, to a point of destination that involves hardware inside a company’s headquarters, or alternately, in its cloud systems.

So why are businesses choosing to use VPN tunnels for networking?

Remote Work

One of the biggest benefits of VPN is that it can be used to support people working from anywhere – from their homes, from a public coffee shop, out in the field – the possibilities are endless. The end to end encryption of the VPN is what safeguards the data as it moves. Corporate leaders often spend time looking at a diagram of data flows and considering the usual data trajectories in building VPN strategies that suit their operations. 

Keeping it Anonymous

From a business and a personal perspective, the VPN can be useful in shielding the identity of the user. It might seem paranoid, but what if someone from a rival company is watching what your employees are doing during the day? In that sense, being able to work anonymously on the Internet is a benefit. The same holds true for people using the Internet in their personal lives.

Good Access

In some cases, a VPN can help promote access to various destinations on the web. It’s part of best practices, which support better business networking in general.

Compliance with Standards

Then there are all of those businesses that have to comply with particular standards in their industries. For instance, there is the healthcare field, where hospitals and networks as well as any associated businesses have to hold private health data safely and securely. So a VPN makes a lot of sense there to comply with that standard. And financial businesses may need to use VPN as part of PCI or other compliance.

Transparency

Here’s another corollary benefit of having a good VPN in place.

As you build the VPN tunnel to accommodate workloads, you start to see what your employees are doing the most during a given cycle. You start to evaluate the sensitive data in more specific ways, and that can help with long-term business planning, too. 

Let Craftech help you to establish an effective VPN for doing business anywhere.