Right Now Is The Best Time To Start Using A VPN.
It’s no secret that life has changed due to COVID-19. “Social distancing” has barged its way into the modern lexicon and working from home is on the rise. Working from home has taught us many lessons quickly, chiefly that our internet infrastructures may not be ready to support the heavy load of constant video calls and streaming. More importantly though, working from home has caused a surge in VPN usage in countries with large COVID-19 outbreaks.
Before digging too deep, it’s best we actually review what a VPN is. VPN stands for Virtual Private Network — basically they extend private networks across public networks to create a connection that is secure, private, and free from government censorship. So why has there been a spike in VPN usage in the age of COVID-19? Well, there are both some fun and some practical reasons.
Let’s start with the the fun one — people are stuck at home and are figuring out ways to access geo-blocked streaming services and content. One of the ways VPNs work is by rerouting your internet activity through alternate VPN servers hiding your true IP address; but one of the ways that this can be used is by sending your activity through foreign servers giving you access to the aforementioned foreign services and content. The more practical — and important — reasons for the rise in VPN use is that companies are making employees use them to access sensitive company material. This isn’t because companies have suddenly lost trust in their teams, but rather because they are mitigating the risk of having sensitive corporate information out on potentially unsecured networks. If there is an information breach while an employee is working remotely the corporation is responsible for the harm caused by that breach, not the employee. Unfortunately, there has also been a rise in cybercrime during this uncertain time.
This rise in cybercrime is particularly notable because while we are all working at home, we are sharing a network with our families or roommates. You can control your actions on the internet, but you cannot control everything that happens on your networks. An entire network can be compromised by a simple phishing attack; which is why it is up to us to ensure our own digital privacy is protected.
If employers are taking these extra precautions to protect their sensitive data why are you not doing the same with your own? Accessing sensitive personal information on public wi-fi networks opens you up to hackers. Using a VPN is one of the simple steps that you can take to protect yourself on public wi-fi. VPNs for private use are relatively inexpensive costing anywhere from nothing to a couple of coffees a month depending on the speed, server selection, and specific feature sets. Personally, the team at Vael uses ProtonVPN. ProtonVPN is a high-speed Swiss based VPN that takes extreme precautions to safeguard digital privacy and consistently ranks as the most-secure VPN. There are a number of VPN services available that offer varying degrees of protection. We encourage you to research which best fits your needs and lifestyle.
Using a VPN is yet another tool to add to our ever growing privacy toolkit. And just like any tool they are not foolproof. A VPN is not bulletproof, but it’s better than going on with no protection.
