Virtual Private Network (VPN) may be a technical jargon for
some of you. Corporate companies, Big organizations glorify VPN and extensively
make use of the technology for their own benefit as well as for the comfort of
their employees. However, from a home user perspective, it is still an
underrated technology, mainly because he/she thinks “Why do I need a VPN”? This
article will clarify the concept of VPN and help you understand what it is in
simple terms.
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) makes up three words that
you need to clearly understand – “Virtual”, “Private”, and “Network”. Let me
briefly clarify what these three words actually mean here. Well, the word
“Network” is pretty much simple to understand. A “Network” connects a number of
devices like computers, laptops, printers, routers that are spread across
different places or geographical locations. These networked devices send and
receive data among each other in a certain fashion.
Next, “Private” means as you know, something “secret” or
“confidential”. That means, the data transferred or exchanged in the network
remains totally secret and even the devices transmitting and receiving the data
do not know the data content. Bingo! You know this is the most important aspect
of VPN- ‘Complete Data privacy’!
Lastly, what does “Virtual” mean? Here, the network is ‘Virtual’
because, not just a single company or organization shares the network, but many
of them do. The underlying physical network is “Logically partitioned” so that
more than one organization share the base network resources without issues.
Early VPN days or
Legacy VPNs
Years before today’s VPN was introduced, some companies,
universities and institutions used Leased circuits or “Private circuits” for
confidential communications among them. These private circuits were managed by
Service providers. Top Business organizations, companies, universities and
institutions hired these circuits from the service providers for a pay and
enjoyed the benefit of dedicated private communications.
Back then, these were a boon to these companies and institutions,
as it helped them connect to their cross-border offices, communicate with their
counterparts and access or share data with them privately. These were often
noted as old or Legacy VPNs. A bit later, something called Trusted VPN came in
to existence.
Trusted VPNs
The Legacy VPNs gave companies using them the freedom of
having their own IP addresses and security policies and best of the business
practises. The service providers took the onus of maintaining the integrity of
these circuits and the companies simply trusted or relied on them for the same.
However the data transferred via these circuits were clearly under threat or
snooping. Thus, even though these Trusted VPNs were good enough at that point
of time, there were no rigid security measures to protect data. This lead to
the introduction of a new type of VPN called Secure VPN.
Secure VPNs
Secure VPNs have been an instant super hit since its
inception. To tighten up data security via the VPNs, protocols were created.
These protocols encrypted the data from the sending terminal of the network and
decrypted back at the receiving end. This way, the Secure VPNs gave a death
blow to Hacking, Snooping and similar fraudulent activities.
Hybrid VPNs
This is something new in the VPN market that offers a good
amount of flexibility to large organizations. Based on the customer’s
requirement, the service provider suggests and picks the best network connectivity
options and offers it to the customer for a reasonable pricing. The customer or
the service provider after proper agreement must ensure to deploy proper
security mechanisms to make the Hybrid VPN successful
Now that you have got a brief idea of what a VPN is you can
learn why you need to use a VPN for secure browsing. Post your queries below.
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