Why Remote Or Home Workers Should Use A VPN?

Published on August 5th, 2020

The ability to work remotely is one of the advantages that many businesses offer employees to help sweeten the agreement. The recent pandemic outbreak has only fed that need, leading many more businesses to allow their staff to work remotely.

While this came as good news for employees, this process could end up causing a great deal of disturbance to organizations that aren’t prepared, and one way to do it properly is to look into remote access VPN solutions.

While trying to ease the situation, a number of tech businesses, including Microsoft, Google, Cisco, LogMeIn and others, have started offering free or upgraded access to their online collaboration tools.

That said, having access to more in-depth video conferencing solutions and online collaboration tools is a great start, but there’s also necessary for employees to remain secure while working from home.

The Rising Risks Of Remote Access

Technology allowed today’s workforce to become increasingly mobile. A business may have an employee in numerous locations across the country. And, even if they don’t work remotely, the odds are you and your staff do at least some of the operations outside the confines of your office – whether from coffee shops, home or customer locations.

Unfortunately, hackers have also developed smart ways to use increased mobility to access valuable organizational data. Thankfully, there is a security measure that can significantly reduce the risks of cyber-attacks while still allowing for mobility – a VPN.

If your staff works remotely, hopefully, you have a well-put system to allow your employees to work for your business remotely. That said, they can use company software resources and access data “directly from the source”, rather than

relying on duplicates on employee devices, which are clearly less secure. This remote access is typically handled through protocols like RDP, that allow a user to access “a remote PC” within the corporation’s internal network. The only issue is that allowing your staff to access the company’s network using the RDP protocols often implies opening your network to the whole internet.

Thankfully, there is a path for businesses to continue using RDP protocols without compromising the company network – through a virtual private network.

How Does VPN Work?

The virtual private network creates an encrypted tunnel between a user’s device and a server connected to the internet. What does that mean? No one between the user and the server they are connecting to can get access to the valuable data that is being conveyed.

VPN is recommended to businesses in need to provide remote access to company resources. For instance, when an employee wants to access data or browse unbiased opinions while maintaining anonymity on 4chan from a location outside the office, a VPN provides them with them a secure tunnel through which to access the data without compromising security.

While without a virtual private network business would have to expose parts of their network to allow employees to log in, a VPN provides a secure way for your staff to log in through the network, using protocols like RDP, without having to be allowed to the public.

Cybercriminals, then won’t gain access to your company’s remote server on the internet, and they won’t be able to seize communications between the network and employees.

A Secure VPN Is Vital During Pandemics

The lockdown imposed by the authorities to battle the effects of a pandemic has been proven to severely impact working operations. According to a new survey, demand for VPNs grew by 44% over the second half of March and remains 22% higher than pre lockdown levels. While we can identify a myriad of solutions to this, for office workers, a vital solution is a VPN.

Having your staff’s network secured by a VPN will provide more confidence in operations. That said, a password can be stolen, sniffed and used, and valuable data stolen. But VPN delivers solutions for businesses of all sizes as it can protect communications, data, network segmentation and offer encrypted, remote access to on-premise, public, and hybrid cloud resources.

This allows businesses to continue their operations during emergencies. As global demand for commercial VPN surges following the work-from-home trend in the battle against the new COVID19, VPN providers, as well as the internet service providers are uniting their forces to handle the increased overall internet traffic of isolated populations.

Cheaper Than Commuting

It goes without saying that for many workers staying at home and using a VPN to connect to the corporate network is somehow cheaper than commuting.

That said, even though you consider the VPN subscription and the electricity costs, it will still cost you less. So, if your IT department has already configured a VPN from employees’ devices directly to the workplace, even better!

Let’s put it this way. You wake up, you take your time to grab a coffee, fall into your car with your make up still to do. Nothing works properly. Suddenly you realize that you’re out of gas, which means one more stop on the way to the office. Then you get stuck in traffic, making you late.

It’s exhausting and time-consuming. Honestly, if you can avoid all that, you should! But if working remotely is an option, you can keep your data secure and private using a VPN. Your current work projects are safe from cyber-attacks thanks to a VPN’s encryption. All this, for a few dollars a month.

Increased Productivity

Allowing your employees to work from home, or a table in their favourite café, or even in a hot-desking workspace is great. If they have enough determination and discipline to work, rather than spending their time on something else, you’ll likely to experience a substantial increase in productivity.

Although for many it might take some time to get accustomed to the new “normalcy”, you won’t have to worry about security and privacy of your connection. And that sort of destruction is known to decrease productivity, not increase it.

Since remote access VPNs are less expensive and secure, organizations can feel more relaxed with letting employees work either from home or while travelling. Employees who are able to work when and where they want tend to be more content as well as more productive.