What Defines a Good Business VPN Solution

1. What Defines a Good Business VPN Solution This is an era of the cloud, and businesses are relying on cloud resources to reduce the cost and complexity of their operations. Businesses have had to evolve to support a mobile workforce or mobile services over the past half-decade. To leverage the security of VPNs and the robustness of the cloud, independent software vendors (ISVs), have developed VPN as a service solution (VPNaaS) for businesses. A business VPN solution on the cloud serves to encrypt an organization’s network while being flexible and scalable to handle the traffic. As a business with a VPN solution on the cloud, you can go a step further with certain key features to guarantee the success of this solution. These are features you should consider when exploring a Business VPN solution. Let’s have an insight into these features. Enabling Split Routing/Tunneling Your employees are highly likely to browse external sources on the internet while connected to the business VPN. This can result in internet traffic being routed through your business’ network, which can be disastrous. It opens the door for external sources to access your databases, payroll systems, web servers, etc. making your company vulnerable to cyber- attacks. Enabling split routing on your Business VPN solution on the cloud allows you to route some device or application traffic via an encrypted VPN, leaving the rest to access the internet freely. In this way, when employees want to access company services, this traffic will be routed via the VPN and when they are browsing external websites, the traffic will be transmitted through their own ISP. Split routing will also enable your employees to utilize the services that work optimally when their location is known, without compromising the business’ network.

2. Enabling External DNS Server For most VPNaaS solutions, the DNS program is active by default. It serves to resolve DNS queries sent from users’ devices that are connected to the VPN. It also prevents DNS information from being leaked. A DNS program can be internal or external. The internal DNS server resolves requests sent internally; by the users of the VPN. An external DNS server, on the other hand, resolves domain requests from the internet. To ensure privacy for your business, you might require your users to use your own servers while connected to your VPN. This is possible with an external DNS server enabled. All DNS requests will be sent to the external DNS server when the VPN connection is active on a device. An external DNS server can also play a role in improving your business website availability. Obfuscated VPN Servers An obfuscated VPN server is a server that lets you use a VPN without disclosing that you’re using it to re-route your traffic. Obfuscated servers enable your users to pass VPN blocks by allowing them to connect to VPNs even in highly restrictive environments. VPN vendors that provide dedicated servers commonly embrace this feature. Utilizing Multiple Security Options Security is a mandatory component of VPN as a service. A business VPN solution must have a variety of security options that you can utilize to ensure your business is well-protected. These include: Multi-Factor Authentication In multi-factor authentication, users must provide at least two pieces of evidence that they are eligible to access your business’ VPN. Multi-factor authentication makes it a lot difficult for unauthorized persons to access your users' accounts, adding an extra layer of security. Single Sign-On Single sign-on is an authentication system that lets your employees log into multiple related but independent company services using a single ID. The true version of single sign-on lets users log in once, and continuously use the services without having to provide authentication information again. Single sign-on is important in reducing the entry points for cyber-attacks since users log in once each day.