Nowadays, it’s virtually impossible to find an organisation or sector that hasn’t dramatically changed through digital transformation.

Whether it was the slow creep of technological improvements across your organisation or the pandemic, we’re willing to bet that your data is among the most valuable things you own today.

Naturally, this has changed the way businesses perceive risk and has ensured that the biggest threat to many businesses is a cyberattack on their systems.

Unfortunately, no silver bullet solution guarantees your business will be safe from attacks, but there are measures you can take to reduce the chances of it happening.

Investing in malware protection, network perimeter defences, and patch management can help prevent cyberattacks – as can using a VPN within your business. However, what is a VPN and is it enough to prevent a cyberattack on its own? Join us as we answer your most burning questions.

What is a VPN?

A VPN is a virtual private network that creates a ‘tunnel’ between the user and the internet to encrypt your internet connection. This can prevent cybercriminals from being able to read your internet activity or from being able to view your IP address and location.

There are VPNs designed especially for the needs of businesses, they provide secure connections for both remote access and site-to-site for businesses operating over different offices or branches.

A VPN will protect remote connections from public WiFi, so if employees work from a café, hotel, or airport using the public WiFi, they would not be exposing the business to the same level of threat as using no VPN.

Due to the pandemic, many businesses switched to working from home – a change which may never fully reverse. When employees log onto devices remotely, they usually have fewer security solutions compared to working from the business workplace. This opened opportunities for hackers to compromise security vulnerabilities and steal data.

Now that many businesses are still offering employees the choice to work from home more often, using a VPN is one of the cybersecurity solutions that can help to protect your business from hacking attempts when employees work from home.

Is a VPN enough to prevent cyberattacks?

While using a business VPN will certainly boost your cybersecurity, there are still weak areas that hackers are able to target. As such, a VPN should be used in conjunction with other solutions.

Firewalls, anti-virus and anti-malware software, cloud backup software, and SSL certificates on websites provide different layers of protection; but one of the most important ways to protect a business from cyberattacks is to ensure employees have effective cybersecurity training.

Research from Stanford University found that almost 90% of data breaches are a result of human error, with phishing scams and poor password management being common reasons behind the breaches. Hackers are generating increasingly sophisticated scams to target employees, tricking them into clicking dangerous links or sharing sensitive data.

As such, it’s important that employees are provided with high-quality cybersecurity training, with training courses that really engage them and change their behaviour upon receiving suspicious communications.

Bob’s Business is an award-winning training provider that helps keep your business protected from cyberattacks by not only providing employees with the knowledge to identify cyberattacks, but also the necessary skills to prevent them.

Find out more about our range of interactive training courses or speak to one of our cybersecurity experts today.