For more than 25 years, VPNs have been well-trusted components for the cybersecurity postures of businesses. Over the years, they became more and more prevalent among organizations. As of today, VPNs are an indispensable cybersecurity solution for all sizes of businesses as modern-day complexities require so. Modern-day businesses are highly dependent on digital technologies, and cloud services. That’s why businesses have to enable some form of secure access to employees to reach corporate resources that are stored in data headquarters or cloud environments.
Additionally, modern-day businesses are up against the highest cybersecurity risks of all time. Nowadays, cybercriminals are around every corner, searching for vulnerabilities, and weaknesses that they can exploit for gaining unauthorized access to their target’s private corporate networks. These malicious actors frequently execute attacks on their target’s systems by using advanced, sophisticated methods and techniques. Generally, their primary goal is to steal confidential data that are stored in data headquarters or cloud environments of their targets. Once they accomplish their goal, they sell the data on the black market and make millions of dollars from it.
Meanwhile, the victim company will be left to pay millions of dollars for recovery costs and compliance fines due to the data breach. On top of monetary costs, data breaches damage a business’s credibility and reputation, and customers lose their trust in the company. Gaining customers’ trust back can be challenging and it may take years. For these reasons, modern-day businesses aren’t in a position where they can overlook and ignore the importance of cybersecurity. In this regard, investing in a good Site-to-Site VPN can improve security in so many ways, and enable robust protection against cyberattacks. In this article, we gathered four mind-blowing benefits of Site-to-Site VPNs, but before that let’s take a closer look at what is a Site-to-Site VPN.
What Is Site to Site VPN?
A Site to Site Virtual Private Network (VPN) is designed to combine two or more local area networks (LAN) as one. Let’s say, you have multiple branch locations in different countries, and Site to Site VPN will connect these branch locations’ LANs into a wide area network. This way, each location will be able to communicate and transfer data to each other securely even if they are located on different continents. Additionally, they will be able to access the resources, and data that are hosted and stored in other branch locations. All employees will securely access all corporate resources as they are inside the branch location.
The Site to Site VPNs require on-premise deployment in the headquarters office, and other branch locations need to have a VPN gateway. The Site to Site VPNs have two types of connections and these are intranet and extranet-based connections. Intranet-based connections are used to interconnect branch locations’ local area networks (LAN) to each other and they become a single combined private network. Intranet-based connections allow every branch location to access the resources that other branch locations have.
Meanwhile, extranet-based connections are used to interconnect branch offices’ LANs with other organizations’ LANs. Extranet-based connections are quite useful when a business’ third-party partners, associates, or contractors need to have access to some part of the corporate resources in order to deliver their services or duties effectively.
While using an extranet-based Site to Site VPN, a business can restrict access to certain resources and data. Simply, third-party parents are only allowed to access necessary resources for their services or duties. This way, extranet-based connections mitigate the security risks associated with third-party entities because they won’t be able to access sensitive, and important resources. In this regard, extranet-based Site to Site connections is really effective when considering the high cybersecurity risks associated with third-party partners’ access to your private corporate networks.
Perks of Site to Site VPN
1- Greater Security
A Site to Site VPN enables enhanced data protection. It employs IPsec (Internet Security Protocol) and enables secure data transmission between branch locations over unsecured IP networks. This protocol operates at the network layer, and it secures IP packets by encrypting and authenticating. All data transfers go through the IPsec tunnel fully encrypted, and once they reach their destination, they simply are decrypted. By using IPsec protocol, Site to Site VPNs makes all data transfers inaccessible to unauthorized parties, and even if cybercriminals get a hold of a data transfer, it will make no sense to them since the data is encrypted end-to-end.
2- Scalability
As time passes, your business can grow and expand to other countries. When that happens, your brand new branch location needs to communicate with other branch locations securely and it should safely access the corporate resources and data. While using Site to Site VPN solution, you can easily scale the VPN’s scope, and add new site and branch locations to your private corporate network. Additionally, new branch locations don’t need an on-premise VPN setup, all it needs is a VPN gateway, and it’s good to go. Shortly, Site to Site VPN is scalable and effective.
3- Lower Latency
Nowadays, high-speed network performance is critical for organizational operations. Latency and network congestion issues can interrupt organizational operations and maybe cause downtime in the systems. Additionally, latency issues can affect employees’ productivity as well. Site to Site VPN can enable lower latency and improved network performance by employing Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology. This networking technology routes all incoming and outgoing traffic through the VPN vendor’s infrastructure, not the public internet. This improves network performance and bandwidth. Shortly, it prevents latency and network congestion issues.
4- Managed Service Opportunities
Deployment and maintenance of Site to Site VPN usually requires a lot of resources, money, and labor. For large companies, these additional expenses and resources can be covered, but small to midsize (SMBs) often lack resources and IT staff. Thankfully, Site to Site VPN can be operated as a managed service. Working with a managed security service provider (MSSP) can help businesses reduce costs. Additionally, your MSSP will manage and maintain Site to Site VPN. Your security will be in the hands of the IT staff of MSSP and these people usually are the experts in their fields, and they will take care of everything.
Last Words
In our modern world, businesses are facing the highest cybersecurity risks. To cope with modern cybersecurity risks, businesses need a set of cybersecurity solutions and Site to Site VPNs are one of them. Investing in a good Site to Site VPN can enable robust security in many ways. While using Site to Site VPN, businesses will have enhanced data protection against cyber attacks.
