VPN the Best Mobile Security Solution Out There
With over half of professionals using a smartphone or tablet as their primary computing device in 2012, this leads for more opportunity for cybercriminals to get creative and hack into these networks to find a goldmine of credit card numbers, banking passwords, and other personal information.
Mobile security breaches won’t be going away, as demonstrated by the breaches that took place in 2011 at major companies like Sony and Citigroup.
Rainer Enders, CTO of NCP Engineering, suggests in his article on Mobile Enterprise that virtual private networks continue to be one of the most reliable and effective ways to protect mobile data. I concur with Enders, as VPNs are only getting better at tackling the changing landscape of mobile security and data protection. Enders advises mobile users on implementing a VPN on their device, pointing out that all VPN solutions aren’t meant for mobility:
A conventional VPN client cannot handle changing physical connectivity, IP addresses and points of network attachment. Because it’s meant for users who tunnel from stationary devices, a conventional VPN will most likely disconnect if users try to switch between networks.
That may be the case with most VPNs, but providers such as ocshield.com and vpn4all.com aren’t most VPN providers. Both have an exclusive ‘Anchor IP’ feature, which anchors a user’s internet protocol address when traveling to keep online payment sites, such as PayPal, and credit card companies from mistakenly locking out customers from their own funds. Even if one is not often travelling between states and countries, the anchor IP is helpful for those who are constantly switching networks so they don’t disconnect from the VPN and open themselves up to a security breach.
As Enders says, a VPN needs to be designed to adapt to network changes easily and enable seamless mobile roaming for teleworkers and professionals constantly on the go. Solution providers such as ocshield.com and vpn4all.com do allow devices to change among 3G/4G, Wi-Fi and LAN networks automatically, for example, redirecting the VPN tunnel without interrupting mobile computing sessions. The VPN should also automatically recognize secure and insecure networks, activating the appropriate firewall and security policies as needed, which is something that both of these solutions also have.
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