(Credit: PCMag/Zooey Liao)
Most small businesses handle sensitive data, whether it be client information or employee records. That information needs to be secured. Ideally, your office network should be isolated, locked down, and managed by an IT professional. However, not every business has the resources to establish such a system. A VPN can help fill in the gaps by providing a secure, easily managed network for you and your team members. Below, we go over exactly what a VPN can do for your business and look at day-to-day situations where it would be helpful.
This article was made possible in part by Proton VPN. It was written and edited independently without partner oversight.
Business VPNs vs. Consumer VPNs: What Are the Differences?
Consumer and business VPNs often share the same basic network infrastructure. The main difference is scale. A business plan will allow you to secure many connections at once and manage them with administrative tools and business-specific features. Barring any add-ons, the core features of the VPN stay the same.
There's another crucial difference between consumer and business systems: how you set up and maintain them. With individual subscriptions, you buy and manage a VPN yourself. You pick your protocols, region, or country to connect to, and configure your settings as you see fit. That same system simply isn’t practical for a business, even if you have only a handful of employees. After all, human error is the leading cause of data breaches. Leaving everything up to your employees introduces weak points in your security infrastructure. One person forgetting to connect to the network properly could compromise sensitive data.
Business plans often include administrative tools that let you, or your trusted IT professional, handle everything. The administrator can set up employee accounts, configure exactly how users connect, and decide on workplace-specific features or rules. These plans are often billed by team size, with options to add newly-hired employees on the fly. You can budget them all in one place rather than trying to manage invoices for a dozen individual subscriptions. Plus, you’ll often get a discount depending on the number of users you enroll in the service, compared with buying individually.
You can also expect a few premium bells and whistles as an enterprise user. In addition to discounted rates, you’ll often get a priority support channel, dedicated IP addresses, and business-centered threat-detection tools. The exact approach to these tools will depend on the service you choose. TunnelBear, for example, keeps things simple with a scalable version of the essential VPN package, while NordVPN uses a business suite called NordLayer that includes more advanced features. Note, we're not discussing self-managed and hosted VPN services here, which are more common in large companies and require specialized hardware and infrastructure to maintain. We're talking about services where you pay a company to entirely handle the backend of the tech for you.
Does Your Business Need a VPN? Ask Yourself These 5 Questions
Let's go over some example business environments below and explain how a VPN could be used in those situations.
1. Does your business rely on a remote workforce that needs to securely access data, applications, and client information?
Using a VPN would allow all workers to connect securely, simulating a controlled in-office environment. Remote workers can run into access issues with their local internet, and compromised networks can be harder to trace when your security team is in a different location. A reputable service will encrypt everyone’s connection when accessing work-related data and applications.
2. Does your business involve sensitive client information and have to abide by regulated data-handling practices?
A VPN can help ensure compliance with regulations, such as HIPAA rules for safeguarding medical information. In this scenario, you will likely need to adhere to additional security and confidentiality measures beyond simply equipping your team with a VPN. However, it will be important to have a central setup where an administrator can control access to sensitive data.
3. Does your business have a hybrid attendance scheme for employees?
Remote doesn’t just mean overseas. If you have team members who often work in coffee shops or from home, it will be important to secure their connection. Public networks are the most prone to being compromised, and a VPN can reduce the risk by offering a secure tunnel to business data.
4. Does your business regularly use external contractors who need temporary access to your systems?
A VPN can give contractors secure access to the information they need from you, just for the time that they work on your project. When it is time to part ways, they can be easily removed from your subscription plan, your network, and your sensitive data, without additional hurdles.
5. Do you want to avoid potential fines or loss of proprietary data key to your business?
Any data can be valuable, especially if it's information regarding your business practices or your clients. For example, something as simple as a client list being leaked could result in a loss of revenue (and potential client blowback). A VPN is a low-cost preventative measure that could spare you from future headaches.
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The 6 Most Important VPN Features for Businesses
The main feature to look for is an enterprise-oriented hub where a single person can control accounts, network access, and employee permissions. The best VPN for consumers won't be appropriate for a small business if it doesn’t at least have a management center.
We evaluate VPNs based on various factors, such as performance, server coverage, and regional content unblocking. Below is a list of our favorite VPN features for small businesses. Some of them may look familiar to consumers shopping for a VPN, but that's because they're useful to everyone, especially businesses that need to secure their employees and data.
1. Location spoofing
A VPN will make your traffic appear as if it is coming from the country you are connecting to. While a lot of people use this feature for entertainment, like streaming Netflix from their home country while abroad, it can also be used to conduct regional research. Sites often display different ads or deals depending on the region of the user connecting to the service. A VPN would let you see what your competitors are offering to users around the world.
2. Multi-device support
Even small businesses usually have dozens of devices that connect to the internet, and your employees probably want to use their phones for work. The service you choose should have support for unlimited simultaneous connections, so your team can use as many devices as they want at once.
3. No-logs policy
This applies to every VPN we test, but a rock-solid no-logs policy (meaning the VPN provider does not log your connections, traffic, bandwidth, or types of data) is even more important for businesses. You need to ensure that you can trust the VPN of your choice with sensitive data.
4. Ease of use and support availability
The control hub should be easy to use, and customer support should be available quickly and around the clock for urgent issues.
5. Site-to-site connectivity
This feature allows users to connect directly to the office network through the VPN’s encrypted tunnel, letting remote employees access shared drives and sensitive information. It is necessary if you have team members who remote into the office’s secure network and should be part of any business-tier VPN plan.
6. Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA)
This feature is more often implemented on secure corporate networks, and it works to restrict access by not granting "trust" to any single admin or user. NordLayer, our overall top pick for businesses, offers site-to-site connections as well as ZTNA.
While this list isn’t exhaustive, a VPN is off to a great start if it includes most of the points above.
Which VPN Is Right for Your Business?
We’ve already discussed a couple of our top choices above, including NordVPN and TunnelBear. Proton VPN consistently tops our best lists, and it has a robust business plan with a central control hub. Windscribe follows suit with its ScribeForce business suite. Lastly, Surfshark has a solid business plan, but you’ll need to apply for access, since the pricing is configured based on your team size and business needs.
Ultimately, the best VPN for your business will be one that you and your employees can easily use, so be sure to read our reviews to find the one that works for you.