Why is VPN Important for Small Businesses?

As market demands are rapidly changing and increasing, SMEs and big corporations are also changing the way of doing business. If we go back a few decades, we see no concept of inventory management systems or other digital software in business workplaces. After some time, organizations adopted networking as a primary method of communication between different individuals and departments of the company. Soon, such networking shifted to internet services where companies would get cloud storage and save crucial data.

Similarly, work emails also became quite common where individuals can share, store & view data that they want from other organizational departments or individuals. As more and more firms moved to this online business system, several challenges came along. Security issues have become a massive problem that requires comprehensive solutions.

A VPN or a Virtual Private Network takes a small private network like an office network and extends it to other outside public networks. There are multiple free VPNs available to download online. Employees can use VPN wherever they work — in the office, at home, or in public, keeping company data secured — VPN simply extends the private network of the office to a public network. It also ensures that security and connectivity are not compromised — it serves to save the organization from cyber-attacks and other security issues.

Virtual Private Network for small businesses

A VPN for small businesses works as an access control system. The admin can restrict or give access to company employees by authorizing after authentication to a certain level. It helps the admin define and control who can access the network.

During COVID-19, employees started working from home, traditionally on an onsite company network. But as they moved to several different public networks from home, no one would be able to get access to the office network. A VPN makes remote accessibility easier and helps the employees log in to the office network and do their jobs just as they used to while onsite.

A VPN creates a private network of the organization. Any public device that connects to the private network through authentication becomes a part of a public network. In this way, a virtual private network protects the company network from any connection of unknown or unwanted devices and ensures safe communication in the organization.

As business firms grew larger and went multinational, they faced several new challenges, including internet laws restricting online activity. VPN ensures that the company employees get in-time access to the organization’s resources. For instance, if the employee is in China with multiple restrictions, the employee will use the internet just as if he is in the USA — this helps to get over all the limits imposed by different governments over online activity.

With several VPN options available in the market, this network security and protection measure is cost-effective and easily adopted into an organization’s infrastructure.