Cybercrimes are not abating any time soon. Hackers who have become tech-savvier are always on the prowl launching attacks with renewed vigor. They are not leaving out anybody, individuals, governments, charity organizations, as well as big and small businesses, are all targeted. You will want to reposition your brand against cybercrimes through VPNs. Six suggestions are listed below.

Earlier last year, the Cambridge Analytica scandal made headlines in the world, shaking the public’s trust in Facebook to the foundations. As if that was not enough, hackers came calling and were able to gain access to over 30 million users’ records in September 2018. In what seemed the most astonishing and one of the biggest hits of 2018, cybercriminals stole over 92 million sensitive documents and files from the DNA ancestry company MyHeritage.

These bad guys also gained access to HealthCare.gov, the government’s Affordable Care Act enrollment website in which 75,000 users were affected.

They did not allow ticket merchant and EventBrite subsidiary TicketFly to go untouched in 2018. Names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of over 26 million customers were breached. While Panera Bread estimated that only 10,000 users were affected, KrebsonSecurity reported that more than 37 million is a more accurate number of the Panera Bread attacks in which personal details such as birthdays, names, emails, physical addresses, and the last four digits of credit card numbers were breached.

The health-tracking app MyFitnessPal was not spared from cybercrimes.

Hackers hit MyFitnessPal hard — and gained access to over 150 million usernames, emails, and passwords in February of 2018. The British Airways website and mobile app were also vulnerable as about 380,000 travelers who purchased their plane tickets ended up having their personal data stolen in August, including their full credit card information — yes, stolen.

Perhaps, one of the most substantial hits in history took place in November 2018, when Starwood Hotels released the information that up to 500 million hotel guests’ data had been stolen in cyber attacks. The data breach was actually discovered on September 10th, but the evidence available showed that attacks could date back to 2014.

The most vital question here is what do you expect in Q3 of 2019, and what can you do to stem the tide of these vicious cybercrimes?

According to RiskIQ’s Klijnsma “In 2018, credit-card skimming criminals grouped under the Magecart label have been carrying out a full-scale assault on e-commerce. They show zero signs of stopping as we head into Q3 of 2019, with the attacks only getting more traction as various groups learn how to become more effective.”

In the face of these mammoth onslaught occasioned by cybercrimes, you should do everything possible to save your business from huge losses.

You will want to protect the trust customers you’ve been dealing with over the years repose in you by granting you access to their highly sensitive information. You need the services of VPN providers to hide the real information of internet users. The beautiful aspect to the VPN business is that there are both paid and free VPNs, so the issue of cost implications should not be an excuse. Even if that were to be so, the amount you would lose as a result of cybercrimes might send your business down the drain.

But before you plunge headlong into any subscription, you need to know about your service provider in depth.

You must understand the plans of hundreds of different VPN services, and learn in real time, which VPN is the best around at the moment. You need to know encryption protocols, prices, server locations, mobile apps, operating system compatibility, customer support, and more.

This information will help you to choose which of the VPNs you subscribe to. However, you need to also have this necessary information regarding VPNs.

1. Service-level agreements

The service-level agreements (SLAs) between the VPN  service provider and the customer is of immense importance. You must be equipped with the information before a contractual agreement is reached. These agreements contain the service criteria, and you need this to make sure the services you require are delivered as you have agreed with the provider. This is the only you have to back up your claims in the case of any disagreement.

It’s not out of place to have some technical issues cropping up from SLAs, but these can always be resolved amicably after reaching a compromise.

2. Data privacy and security

The type of technology that was used in the construction of the VPN you want to subscribe to is vastly important. How securely encrypted is the communication network between each VPN host? What happens when the VPN host transmits the common communications infrastructures? The reliability of your data depends on this.

3. Grasping the discrete nature of VPNs

It may amount to a very grave mistake if you fail to understand the discrete nature of the VPN you want to subscribe to. The absolute truth is that while VPNs may not be completely separate entities, they are, however, distinct in that they share their operations across a domain network in a discrete fashion. No points of interconnection are shared among VPNs. It must provide private communication separately and does not need to depend on any other VPN.

4. Censorship issues

Your VPN should be able to solve problems related to censorship from governments and other regulatory bodies. Any VPN you subscribe to must be able to access information from any website. Some VPNs go the extra mile of assessing geo-restricted contents and can even bypass the Great Firewall of China,

5. Services rendered by the VPN

Before you subscribe to any VPN, you should endeavor to find out the varieties of services its service provider (SP) can render. Their services should cover areas like web hosting, the ability to support both intra – and inter-VPN, and worldwide internet connectivity.

6. Understanding the tunneling protocol of VPNs

After encryption, your data is transferred through a tunneling protocol. If you service provider is incorporated with a split-tunneling feature which affords you access to dissimilar security domains like a public network (e.g., the Internet) and a local LAN or WAN at the same time, using the same or different network connections that should be better. Using different pathways and connections infers better protection and more laborious efforts needed in an attempt at an interception on the VPN.

The different tunneling protocols come with different characteristics, with some more secure than others. There is the need to discover the type your potential SP is using before connecting.

Conclusion

It’s safer to be connected to a VPN be it paid or free, no matter the quality of the services, and safest to be connected to one that’s well-rated amongst others in every sense of the world, based on practical observations and studies.

John Ejiofor

Digital Marketer, Content Writer

John Ejiofor is a Digital Marketer, SEO Specialist, and Freelance Content Writer. He’s the Founder of Nature Torch, a blog that discusses the impact of humans on nature. He can be reached via john@naturetorch.com