Multinational enterprise teams operate in diverse time zones, cultures, languages, and compliance environments. These heterogeneous environments make it challenging for employees to secure remote access.
Take a growing enterprise that plans to expand into new markets. Its IT teams must build scalable resources for local workforces, meet security standards, and provide language support.
Alternatively, consider a business with remote teams cultivating a campaign or product launch across multiple countries. Their disjointed departments must collaborate but struggle with connectivity delays due to inconsistent access controls blocking essential resources.
These organizations could have avoided these challenges entirely by using a corporate virtual private network (VPN). Read on to discover how corporate VPNs offer solutions for modern business challenges.
VPNs are private networks that route data through remote servers and enable secure remote access via encrypted “tunnels.” These solutions continue to expand in popularity, as evidenced by the global VPN market’s projection to grow at a CAGR of 15.3% from 2023 to 2030.
A corporate VPN is designed for businesses, enabling consistent connectivity and secure remote access within business frameworks.
While the two types of VPNs share commonalities, there are five key differences to know.
Both solutions connect users to a private network. However, corporate VPNs focus on enabling secure remote access to company resources. They allow employees in any location to securely connect to internal servers and applications, bypass geo-restrictions, and share files.
Personal VPNs prioritize user privacy and anonymity. They allow users to mask their IP address and location, conceal online activity, and access censored content.
Corporate VPNs offer centralized management capabilities. Think user access control, security updates, audit trails, integrations, and real-time monitoring through a single solution.
Personal VPNs are decentralized. Each user manages VPN settings, applications, accounts, and devices independently.
Corporate VPNs scale rapidly and seamlessly, accommodating many users and devices across many locations. They’re customizable and integrate with countless tools. These features of business VPNs are essential for multi-location enterprises, allowing IT teams to create resources for new departments or expand capacity during high-traffic periods.
Personal VPNs have limited or nonexistent scalability. They present caps on servers, users, and devices. This complicates network expansions and usage increases.
Corporate VPNs charge by user volume, with enterprises paying via subscription plans. These solutions have tiered cost levels for different feature sets. Businesses should shop around for bulk discounts, customizable services, and diverse functionality options.
Personal VPN pricing structures vary. Some offer free tiers, but most charge through a subscription or lifetime plan per user or device.
In 2023, data compromises affected 353 million individuals. Given these widespread impacts, preventing breaches is crucial for companies protecting large amounts of data.
The consequences of these breaches are far-reaching, impacting individuals, businesses, and entire industries. For example, the healthcare industry deals with extremely sensitive patient data, including Personally Identifiable Information (PII), medical records, and financial information.
Additionally, the financial industry handles highly valuable and sensitive financial data, including customer account information, transaction history, and credit card details.
Industries like healthcare and finance, which handle highly sensitive data, face heightened security challenges and must prioritize robust data protection measures. Look at a few enterprise VPN security features that help global businesses safeguard their data.
AES-256 is a robust symmetric encryption protocol and block cipher endorsed by the NIST. This solution prevents unauthorized access to protected information by turning messages into encrypted 128-bit blocks.
2FA is a login security measure requiring two forms of identification. This verification method cultivates additional protection against unauthorized access and data breaches.
These policies restrict which users can access which resources and systems within a network based on detailed criteria. IT teams use them to carefully control which data, applications, and parts of systems users can see. These policies include role-based access controls, dynamic permissions restrictions, and least privilege protocols.
This measure streamlines security updates. Decentralized security updates create inconsistencies, inefficiencies, and vulnerabilities, while centrally managed security updates maintain the consistency and security multi-location enterprises need.
Personal VPNs don’t offer the same levels of protection. Their security specs aren’t enterprise-grade and can’t protect data for 100+ employees or customers.
Rigorous industry regulations like HIPAA and PCI-DSS demand robust data protection measures. Personal VPNs can’t fulfill that demand, as they don’t offer advanced security, centralized control capabilities, or audit trails.
Without these functionalities, companies face massive compliance risks that render them vulnerable to breaches, fines, disruptions, and reputational damage. Therefore, personal VPNs can’t satiate enterprise needs.
Corporate VPNs do more than augment cybersecurity and compliance adherence—they optimize overall efficiency.
Enterprise-scale VPNs centralize everything from user provisioning and password management to access controls and audit trails. They do this across massive workforces, simplifying operations, monitoring, and reporting activities.
They streamline collaboration by enabling secure interdepartmental communication, encrypted file sharing, and consistent connectivity across geographical boundaries. As a result, they augment productivity, engagement, and cost-effective workflows.
Corporate VPNs offer multilingual support interfaces, ensuring consistency in understanding and accessibility across languages—a crucial benefit for enterprises with diverse workforces scattered across the globe.
These solutions provide secure remote access, helping ensure continuity during network outages and disruptions. PwC analysts highlight that “enterprise resilience and the ability to respond to crisis and disruption effectively are critical for organizations to thrive in today's uncertain world.”
This viewpoint emphasizes just how crucial the disaster recovery solutions corporate VPNs provide are for enterprises.
Both private and corporate VPNs enable secure remote access, but they differ in everything from management capabilities to security specs.
Corporate VPNs focus on business needs and enterprise-grade security. Private VPNs offer privacy and anonymity for personal users but cannot sufficiently maintain compliance, assist with disaster recovery, or protect sensitive data for multi-location enterprises.
Are you looking to adopt a robust corporate VPN solution?
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