As we continue to discover how your privacy is capitalized, we should also explore some technologies on the market. One of the most popular and most talked about technologies is “VPN” or Virtual Private Network.
VPN is a very old technology that creates a tunnel or a path encrypted from point to point. The enterprise I.T. market heavily uses this technology to secure “out of the office” computing.
In basic terms, imagine a tunnel that travels through a city, but it can be only be accessed by the door at your house and the door at your private office. This private tunnel is built on the same streets you see outside but it has no windows, no one can see you, what you’re wearing or driving. If someone does break into the tunnel, you are wearing camouflage, “The Encryption”.
Wow! That sounds secure, and it is but only if you go to your office and stay in your private office without speaking or seeing anyone else.
“Guess what!”, that's never the case, because when you enter your office building, your colleagues know you’ve arrived, how you got there, what you’re wearing and what you have in your briefcase.
As you ask your office colleague for something, “a coffee with milk”, your colleague goes to the kitchen and meets up with your boss. Now your boss knows you are there and thinks “Oh, I have to tell them a joke”. Your boss walks into your private office and has a chat.
Now, your colleague that grabbed you a coffee calls their friend to tell them you that showed up at work and their friend being your friend calls you to say "Hello".
Its 5pm at the end of your work day, you travel back through the secured private tunnel to your home and no one or even neighbors knew that you had left for the day.
But you feel sick, the milk in your coffee was spoiled!
So how did VPN secure you;
to hide your presence at your office building,
to protect you from the spoiled milk,
to your colleagues or friends talking to you at work,
to know what you were wearing,
and your boss stopping you for 20 minutes to tell you joke?
That’s the same with VPN;
Your office buidling is “cloud sign-in websites”,
Your colleague is “ Search Engine, websites that are watching you, and then telling others”,
Your boss is “Ads, pop-ups, disruptions you can’t control”,
And as for the spoiled milk, well that’s the “Virus”.
So where were you protected? We will let you answer that question in our next posts.