CONTEXT:
The amidst breakout of COVID-19 has harmed commercial enterprises. Employees are compelled to work from home. It was challenging for the companies to put transition over remote work. The massive number of employees and staff working from home is gradually increasing. Apart, it has also hindered the economic progress of the enterprises. This current situation of global pandemic indicates that throughout the world, considerable spikes in work-from-home policies are exerting pressure on IT administrators to flake virtual access private network (VPN).
Many enterprises have built their interfaces while keeping physical connectivity in mind. Very few of them were designed to support remote access connections from home and offices. However, while the abundance of employees and coworkers working from home stretches to increase, institutions need to continue providing good customer service. After all, security can not be neglected, especially for multinational companies. If customers feel that they are overlooked or are not receiving the level of support they expect, they will find options for the other company. This may result in financial growth.
The enterprises instantly need to transit this shift, and they must be prepared for the worst-case scenario. Specifically, institutions need clarity in the VPN service.
Expanding the Network for Remote Employees
In some cases, work from home campaigns may work for software or IT enterprises. But when it comes to production industries, it may not work because these industries completely rely on hand-on interaction.
VPN: An extra edge to the security
So in order to adapt remote practices, companies are designing their own VPN server connection, which would allow employees to connect to the internal network of the company. This is their opportunity and danger. Because such a transition may impact adversely, companies have an excellent opportunity to flourish their methodology. They can deploy their VPN with security, capacity, and visibility in mind. But exposer to the external network may put a potential threat in the security and integrity of the enterprises.
One incorrect setting or with the default setting, if deployed incorrectly, may allow opening a vulnerable exploit on VPNs for malicious actors, essentially while exposing the entire network to the internet.
In a recent alert, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned organizations of the dangers of vulnerable VPNs. Specifically, “as organizations use VPNs for telework, more vulnerabilities are being found and targeted by malicious cyber actors.”
Because of such traits, institutions need to be sure to deploy VPNs while keeping security the topmost priority. Updates and patches should be practised on a regular basis to counter vulnerabilities. Additionally, a special network monitoring team should be hired and deployed to detect any unusual activity on the main system server. Doing so may enable a fast response to detect and quarantine malicious threats.
Additionally, public webinars should be conducted by the enterprises so that they could spread public awareness regarding the use of VPN and educate about the potential threats that could exploit the system. Threat actors are aware of the rise in remote employees, and they will stop at annihilation to find vulnerabilities in-home networks to infiltrate the corporate network. Just because you connect to a VPN doesn’t make you completely secure because phishing attacks may escalate VPNs and are most likely to target in the coming future.
Managing VPN Concerns
With the growing number of VPN users, it can potentially create some server-side problems. So it creates a major problem for businesses to manage security standards. The growing number of employees connecting to the VPN has created a mess that has resulted in limiting the number of connections to the VPN. This activity has eventually reduced security and productivity for team members.
IT administrators have access to all the logs of devices that were available at the time of physical reporting. Thus, routing all web traffic from user end devices to the corporate VPN, administrators can still maintain transparency of these devices. Unfortunately, Some employees may unknowingly escalate the VPN connection that could be a critical threat to online security. So employees need to be detailed about the proper use of VPN and its derivatives.
Thus to maintain data privacy, it always better to opt for reliable VPN service. Apart from this, it’s beneficial to hire a network monitoring team to analyze data packets. Besides, measuring latency, jitter, packet loss, and other network analytics will give the business an extra edge to ensure the satisfaction of all users.
