How to Ensure Your Business VPN Remains Anonymous

VPNs can provide a great deal of online privacy and anonymity — if you make the correct choices along the way to ensure that happens. Take a look at how to optimize your business VPN if anonymity is one of your greatest concerns.

Install Your VPN as Widely as Possible

Think about all the access points to your business data. You can reach it via your laptop and desktop computers, certainly. But those are only the beginning. Your router provides a way into your internal network, as do any mobile devices that you or your employees use to access data on the go. And how many browsers is your business using when connecting to the internet?

If you've only installed your VPN on your browser (the easiest option for many users), you're only getting protection when you use that specific browser. You also need to protect your operating system, as well as your router. In addition, your VPN should be installed on every mobile device that connects to your company's data.

Read Your VPN Provider's Fine Print

The ultimate goal in ensuring your privacy is a completely untraceable IP address. But your VPN is not untraceable for one very good reason: your VPN provider knows your IP address. And not all providers keep that information as tightly protected as you might wish.

Now is the right time to read the fine print on your VPN company's privacy policy. Many VPNs promise that they won't keep logs of your online activity, but what each provider means by that can vary from company to company. Choosing the right VPN can be crucial if a high level of security is important to you.

Among the high-end features that can make a difference in providing the near-anonymous presence you want online are:

• Stealth mode, which helps you evade firewalls in countries that put severe restrictions on internet use and that keeps your Internet service provider (ISP) from seeing your use of a VPN.

• OpenVPN encryption at a military-grade level.

• A killswitch to keep your employees from revealing unencrypted data to your ISP by accident or in the event that your VPN drops your connection.

Verify the Privacy of Your Connection

Sometimes VPN connections can "leak" some of your information, particularly your IP address or your Domain Name Server (DNS) info. Various websites can confirm whether your VPN connection is fully anonymized or whether you're experiencing this kind of leak.

You can also provide an extra layer of protection by using a private IP address that's dedicated to your company. Many VPN services offer this feature, however others share a private IP address between multiple clients. Check with your VPN provider to make sure it's providing you with a dedicated IP address rather than a shared one.

Pair Your VPN With Tor for Stronger Protection

Your VPN doesn't have to carry the burden of keeping your business data protected and your online traffic anonymized all on its own. Yes, you want to employ firewalls and other standard protection, of course. But you can take your quest for complete privacy a step further when you pair your VPN with the anonymizing network Tor.

When you send your Web traffic via Tor, you essentially remove anything that could identify your IP from the connection. The combination of a business VPN with Tor masks your IP completely. Even if there are snoops out there trying to find out what you or your employees are doing online, they won't be able to track you.

Remember how your VPN service provider knows your IP address? When you combine the use of Tor with a business VPN, you take that knowledge away from even your VPN provider. All it sees now is the Tor exit node. At the same time, your VPN encrypts all data entering or exiting the Tor network, and it continues to spoof your geographic location. Because not all VPN providers are able to work with Tor, you must choose your provider carefully if this is an option you want to explore.

Your business VPN is an important link in your ultimate goal of remaining anonymous and protecting your company's data and transmissions online. Following these steps can help you ensure your business is enjoying the highest level of digital security.