VPN security: are VPNs secure enough for your business?

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are often seen as a cornerstone of remote access security, important for both protecting data and controlling access to your organization’s internal systems. In essence, they allow employees to connect securely, reducing the risk of unauthorized access and data breaches. However, VPN security isn’t guaranteed. Some providers use weak encryption, allow IP leaks, or log data, creating significant risks.

The scale of the problem is hard to ignore. Zscaler's report found that 92% of organizations are concerned about ransomware attacks tied to VPN vulnerabilities, and 81% plan to adopt a zero-trust strategy within the next 12 months. Verizon's 2025 DBIR notes that exploitation of vulnerabilities now accounts for 20% of breaches, and on the consumer side, 28% of users still rely on free VPNs despite known risk—a habit that often spills into work devices.

In this blog post, we’ll explore how VPNs protect your data, when their flaws create risk, and when alternatives like zero-trust network access (ZTNA) or Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) can make more sense for your business.

Key takeaways

• A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel for your data, protecting it from cybercriminals and supporting private browsing, even on public network connections.
• VPNs also help control who can access your internal systems and data, adding an important layer of network security for organizations.
• The most secure VPNs offer strong encryption (such as AES-256), IP address leak prevention, a no-logs policy, and multi-factor authentication (MFA) to strengthen enterprise security.
• While VPNs provide significant protection, they are not perfect. Risks like credential theft, flaws in VPN configuration, and poor vendor practices may still compromise security.
• NordLayer offers flexible business VPN solutions to protect your company’s data and enable secure remote access, helping to reduce the risk of data breaches.

What is a VPN and how does it work?

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) conceals web traffic from external observers by creating a secure, private tunnel between your device and the internet. This tunnel hides your location and prevents eavesdropping on browsing activity.

VPNs use tunneling protocols to encrypt your data in transit, from the moment it leaves your device until it reaches its destination. Operating on top of existing networks, VPNs route data through private servers, which assign new IP addresses. This process protects data in transit and supports private browsing by masking the originating IP address.

Common VPN security weaknesses

Traditional Virtual Private Networks have been a go-to for securing network access, but they often leave your valuable assets exposed to modern threats. While they offer a basic layer of protection, here’s why conventional VPN security can fall short of enterprise security needs:

• Vulnerability to intrusion. Attackers with an employee’s stolen credentials can gain access to critical network resources. A conventional VPN is good at protecting the network perimeter, but once an attacker is inside that perimeter, it offers little control. They can move freely across critical resources, which can lead to significant data loss.
• Impractical and slow. Segmenting your corporate network effectively with a standard VPN is complex and inefficient. Users may have to connect to multiple VPNs just to access different applications, causing slowdowns. All that data moving back and forth between remote workstations and central data centers can add latency.
• Limited access control. Different employees need different levels of access. Your marketing team needs access to one set of documents, while your finance team needs another. Traditional VPNs often lack granular access control, which makes it hard to customize permissions based on a person’s specific role, leading to over-privileging and unnecessary risk.

5 essential features for VPN security

Here’s a list of the 5 best features for strong VPN security:

• Strong encryption: A VPN’s job is to keep your data unreadable to anyone who intercepts it, and the cipher behind that encryption matters. Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) with 256-bit keys is the same standard used by the U.S. government and security teams worldwide to protect classified information, and it's often paired with ChaCha20 for strong performance on mobile devices.
• IP address leak prevention: A VPN’s main function is to hide your IP address and protect your online activity from being tracked. However, some VPNs might have flaws that can leak your IP address. Always choose a VPN provider that prevents IP leaks and check reviews to ensure they have a solid track record.
• No information logging: No-log VPNs don’t collect or store data about your online activity, login details, or browsing history. This is important for privacy, even if someone gains unauthorized access to the VPN. Always verify whether a VPN logs any data and how it handles user information.
• VPN kill switch: If your VPN connection drops, your internet access could revert to your regular connection, exposing your data. A VPN kill switch prevents this by automatically closing certain programs to avoid data leaks when the connection fails.
• MFA: Using a VPN with MFA strengthens security, ensuring only authorized users can access the network. After entering your username and password, you might receive a code or a notification on your phone. This extra step makes it harder for threat actors to gain access.

How does a VPN protect data?

When your organization uses a VPN, it establishes a secure connection between your employees’ devices and your network. VPNs use strong encryption protocols like IPsec or SSL/TLS to protect your data in transit. Each device connected to the VPN uses special keys to encrypt and decrypt the data it sends and receives, supporting secure business communications.

Even if your company’s data passes through the public internet, the encryption keeps it safe.
For instance, if an employee works remotely and connects to the company’s VPN to access a database, the data travels through public internet networks. Even if cybercriminals tap into this network, they will only see encrypted information, not the actual business data.

By using a secure VPN, you can protect your organization from data breaches and keep sensitive information confidential, protecting your business operations and client relationships.

How do VPNs help with access control?

Encryption and anonymization are the most familiar aspects of VPN technology. However, VPNs also focus on access management, ensuring that only authorized users can access sensitive resources.

Access control is the process of admitting users to network resources. Users make access requests and provide credentials. Access control systems compare these credentials with individualized security profiles. If the two match, security controls grant access to network resources.

VPNs add more functionality to this basic process:

• Companies can create secure VPN networks for each department or team.
• Users access the relevant VPN when logging in to the company network, adding another layer of authentication to keep attackers out.
• Inside the network, users can access the assets they need, while VPN encryption hides other resources from view.
• A remote secure access VPN suits home workers and travelers, wherever they are.

Are there any risks when using VPNs for security?

No security system is flawless, and VPNs are no exception. While VPN security offers significant protection, there are some risks to be aware of:

1. Credential theft. If attackers steal an employee’s authentication details, they may access critical network resources.
2. Attackers can exploit VPN encryption. Just like regular users, malicious actors benefit from VPN encryption and IP anonymization, making it harder to detect their activities.
3. Misconfigured VPNs. Incorrect VPN setups can undermine the effectiveness of VPN security, and some solutions may not offer strong protection, especially if updates are missing.
4. Vendor issues. Some VPNs keep logs that compromise user privacy or recycle IP addresses, weakening IP address anonymization.
5. VPN updates. Not all VPN providers offer updates for new security risks. When networks use multiple VPNs to manage access requests, security managers have to track a complex updating schedule. If they miss updates, it could leave the networks vulnerable.

Despite these risks, the benefits of using VPN security to protect critical data generally outweigh the potential drawbacks. Companies should follow cybersecurity best practices, manage updates carefully, choose suppliers wisely, and employ access control tools. VPNs work well within a robust security setup, mitigating many of the risks listed above.

Why free VPNs are a security risk

Free VPNs may look like a low-cost shortcut, but for businesses, they often create more risk than they remove. Independent reviews and security advisories consistently flag the same issues:

• Data harvesting and sale. Many free VPNs fund themselves by logging browsing activity and selling it to advertisers or data brokers—the opposite of what a VPN should do.
• Weak or fake encryption. Studies of popular free VPN apps have found broken encryption, missing protocols, or DNS leaks that expose VPN traffic to anyone watching the network.
• Malware and tracking. Research into mobile free VPNs found a high share of apps containing malware, intrusive trackers, or risky third-party SDKs.
• Limited support and updates. Free VPNs rarely patch new vulnerabilities quickly, leaving known flaws open for attackers to exploit.

On a personal device, the cost is privacy. On a work device, the cost can be a breach. For any organization handling customer or financial data, free VPNs should be treated as an unmanaged risk, not a money-saver.

VPN security best practices for businesses

A VPN is only as secure as the way you deploy and manage it. The practices below help reduce exposure and get the most out of your VPN connection.

Use strong, modern encryption

Choose a provider that encrypts data in transit with AES-256 and ChaCha20 mechanisms, and supports current protocols such as OpenVPN and WireGuard-based options. Avoid legacy protocols that are no longer maintained.

Enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA)

Pair every VPN login with MFA so a stolen password alone cannot grant access. MFA is one of the highest-impact, lowest-effort controls for enterprise security and significantly reduces account takeover risk.

Apply least-privilege access control

Give users access only to the resources they need for their role. Combine access control policies with network segmentation so a compromised account cannot move freely across the environment.

Keep VPN clients and gateways patched

Most high-profile VPN breaches in recent years exploited unpatched gateways. Set a clear patching cadence, subscribe to vendor advisories, and retire end-of-life appliances on schedule.

Monitor VPN traffic and user activity

Log connections, devices, and access events—not what people are doing inside applications—so your team can spot unusual sessions, impossible-travel logins, or sudden spikes in data transfer.

Ban free VPNs on work devices

Free VPNs introduce data leakage, malware, and compliance risk. Make it clear in your acceptable-use policy that only the company-approved VPN may be used for work, and back it up with endpoint controls.

Are there alternatives to VPNs?

While VPN tools are powerful for securing network communications and protecting sensitive data, they aren’t the only option. Other methods, such as ZTNA or SASE, can also provide strong protection for corporate networks and control access to critical resources:

Identity and access management (IAM)

IAM can function as a VPN alternative. IAM, along with Privileged Access Management (PAM), helps control access to network resources. Employees use sign-in portals at the network edge, where IAM tools compare their credentials with centrally stored data, allowing access only to authenticated users.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) further strengthens an IAM setup by requiring users to supply two or more credentials, such as biometric scans or access cards. This additional layer of security generally ensures that only legitimate actors gain access.

Zero-trust network access (ZTNA)

ZTNA tools authenticate users but apply more detailed protections as users move within the network. In a ZTNA setup, users can only access resources according to strict permissions. East-west movement across the network is tightly restricted, making it harder to execute data thefts.

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)

SASE is another VPN alternative. SASE secures every network endpoint. Next-generation firewalls and software-defined perimeters define the resources available to every user. As with ZTNA, SASE setups tightly control movement across the network.

SD-WAN

Software-defined Wide Area Networks (SD-WAN) can be found in SASE and ZTNA systems and stand-alone setups. They apply over networks like VPNs, routing traffic, authenticating users, and governing access to third-party SaaS resources.

While alternatives like SASE and ZTNA offer advanced protection, they are complex to implement. VPNs remain a practical, secure, and easy-to-manage option for many small and medium-sized businesses.

Quick comparison: VPN vs. alternatives

Secure your online privacy with NordLayer

Securing sensitive data and supporting private browsing are essential for businesses of all sizes. A VPN protects your data from cybercriminals and helps control access, keeping unauthorized users out of your network. By using a secure VPN with strong encryption, MFA, and reliable VPN protocols, businesses can greatly improve their security.

NordLayer provides flexible business VPN solutions for businesses focused on enterprise security. Our VPN services protect data flows between remote workstations and company servers. With NordLayer, you can set up a business VPN that helps reduce the risk of data breaches.

Get in touch today to explore VPN solutions that fit your business needs.