VPNs (Virtual Private Network) offer a way for data to be transmitted in a secure way. By encrypting in-transit data, customers and employees are kept safe from attacks that aim to intercept and steal it. VPNs’ proximity to browsing behavior and data also makes them shockingly important to an enterprise’s data integrity, however.
Rather than charge you directly, “free” VPNs make money in sneakier, riskier ways – often by selling this data.
Freebies can be enticing – however, free VPNs are consistently and overwhelmingly insecure. Even throughout the last few years, free VPN services have grossly and consistently mishandled user data.
Even giants can be riddled with issues: SuperVPN’s mobile application once had over 100 million global downloads. As far back as 2016, however, researchers were warning that the free software was riddled with malware.
Only a few weeks before this last discovery, SuperVPN was trending on Twitter (now X) after Pakistan started heavily restricting internet traffic.
Fowler highlights the fact that notes in the databases were almost exclusively in Chinese, and the cloud database’s owner was Chinese telecoms company Qingdao Leyou Hudong Network Technology Co.
Alongside suspicions of international surveillance, free VPNs are just plain unsafe: in 2022, another free VPN provider under the name of BeanVPN left an ElasticSearch instance open to the public. Over 20GB of information – or 25 million records – were left unprotected.
This included user device and Play Service IDs, connection timestamps, IP addresses, and more.
Paying for a business VPN can be an intimidating prospect: it creates no direct revenue streams, nor is it visible enough for potential customers to be persuaded by.
However, glancing at the past security mistakes of free VPN software doesn’t quite tell the full picture of the consequences of such security oversight. The cost of breaches can very quickly spiral into the millions – GDPR violations are regularly cited as some of the most expensive.
With this in mind, here’s how paid VPNs are an investment that grant greater online privacy and peace of mind to employees and customers alike.
Perimeter 81 delivers a scalable cloud VPN solution designed to help businesses securely connect to their cloud resources with ease. Keep access to sensitive data tightly controlled and monitored, while Perimeter81 maintains the physical and technical safeguards that protect your data.
Built for security teams, the platform includes a centralized dashboard that streamlines the configuration and monitoring of VPN settings.
With a strong emphasis on simplicity, scalability, and robust security, Perimeter 81 is the ideal partner to help you meet cloud compliance requirements, seamlessly integrating with your other cloud service providers. See how Perimeter81 can transform your cloud security.