VPNs are an absolute necessity for businesses. Data breaches happen every day, and no business wants to be on the receiving end of angry customers, financial liability, and horrible publicity. Many businesses were quick to adopt VPNs, but some of them were a little too quick. Either they didn’t consult with their IT specialists, or their IT specialists didn’t quite know what they were getting themselves into.
Findings this year show that many businesses must not have had a full portrait of what to look for in a VPN. Two popular VPN companies dropped the ball, missing crucial flaws that could have easily been exploited by expert hackers.
What Vulnerabilities Are Being Exploited?
August’s Black Hat security conference put two VPN companies on plast. Fortinet’s FortiGate VPN and Pulse Secure VPN were both outed for glaring security issues. Vulnerabilities with both VPNs were essentially the same – exploits allowed for pre-authentication file reads, where a third party can take files from the system without any authentication.
Researchers were forthcoming in drawing attention to the flaws found in both systems, and hackers were easily able to reverse engineer instructions in an attempt to gain access to sensitive information in both systems. Hackers can change passwords within the system and even input malicious code that can steal any sensitive information that passes through these VPNs.
Who is At Risk?
Though both companies have released patches to resolve the vulnerabilities, a significant portion of their users still have not utilized the patches. Obviously, there’s no way to tell exactly which businesses haven’t resolved the issue. It’s known that government institutions, universities, banking institutions, Fortune 500 companies, and healthcare providers use VPNs provided by these companies.
Applying patches or changing a VPN would require a certain amount of downtime. Some affected businesses and institutions haven’t yet applied these patches. They’re still vulnerable, and many of them don’t seem to be in a rush to fix the problem.
Practicing Good VPN Maintenance
Always update everything. Even if it’s inconvenient. Even if you have to close your business for two hours. If you don’t want to update during the day, set your updates and patches to run at night. You need to stay ahead of the current when it comes to cybersecurity. One tiny flaw in your strategy can result in a massive data leak that your business may never recover from.
Only choose reputable, well established VPN companies who provide more security and encryption than necessary. A little overkill is okay when it comes to keeping sensitive data away from people who may misuse it.
Protecting Your Business with TorGuard VPN
If your business does not currently utilize a VPN service or you fear your current service may be unreliable, start using TorGuard. TorGuard offers VPN packages for businesses of any size – from standard startup bundles all the way up to custom Enterprise packages.
TorGuard uses military grade AES-256 encryption, unblocks all apps, and keeps your business data safe from leaks and breaches and give your employees secure access to cloud resources. Everything is safely encrypted and cannot be exploited or intercepted by third parties. All business VPN plans come with a dedicated IP for whitelisting employees who need access to sensitive systems. A lot of time and effort went into building our VPN – and we know how one small flaw can sink a whole ship. That’s why we created something ironclad. You can trust TorGuard with your business VPN needs.