VPN

What it means

A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel between a device and the company network or a provider. The data crosses the public internet in a form nobody along the way can read.

In a company it has one practical purpose: secure remote access to internal systems - the accounting server, on-premise storage, a printer or a database that is not, and should not be, exposed to the internet.

A VPN protects only the stretch between the device and the end of the tunnel. Beyond it, inside the company network or at the provider, data travels the ordinary way, so it is not end-to-end encryption and it does not replace securing each application and its sign-in.

How it works in practice

It is configured alongside the firewall: services are reachable only over the VPN, never from a public address. Accounts are personal and are revoked when someone leaves, as part of access control.

The connection is protected with two-factor authentication; a password alone is no longer enough. Working from a cafe or a hotel, a VPN is sensible even when only cloud services are used.

When a client runs the accounting program on its own server, we reach it through a VPN account set up for our firm alone. The client’s staff working from home office are handled the same way: each has their own access, and when the engagement or the employment ends, the access is removed the same day.

What to watch out for

Consumer VPN services solve something else than a company VPN - they hide an address but give no access to your network. And a VPN does not protect against an infected device: it reaches the network through the tunnel exactly as its user does.

The VPN gateway itself is a device exposed to the internet, and attackers look for it deliberately. Without regular firmware updates it becomes the way in to the accounting data and the backups, so updates belong in a fixed maintenance plan, not in “when there is time”.