What are the Easy Ways to Create a VPN?

A VPN (Virtual Private Network) can spoof your location or give access to geo-restricted content on the internet. It keeps you safe from malicious practices and hides your original IP address by assigning you a bogus one.

Although there are commercial VPNs that can get the job of hiding your original identity done with just a single click. But if you're against VPNs that sell data to third parties, then you can go for the option of hosting your own VPN server at home with the limited resources you have in hand.

Keep on reading to know what are the easy ways to create a VPN server at home.

What Are My Options?

A VPN server can easily be hosted by using Cloud Services.

You can use your router to create a VPN server.

And if you don't have a VPN router but have a router that supports third-party firmware, just flash your router.

Create a dedicated VPN server on a device (PC or Raspberry Pi).

What Is A VPN & How Does It Work?

A VPN can hide your online identity on the internet as you surf. It makes sure that you are not vulnerable to hackers and eavesdroppers looking to exploit sensitive information (bank details, pins, passwords).

Not even your ISP or government authorities can track your traffic when you're browsing the internet with a VPN connection. 

When you connect to a VPN, a secure bridge is formed between the user and the VPN server. Whatever requests you generate, they're encrypted while traveling through that bridge until it reaches the destination page.

It can even geo-spoof your location to a different region as if you're physically accessing the internet from there.

Create a VPN On Cloud

Cloud computing is everywhere and cloud-based solutions are being utilized by leading industries in the world.

One of the easy ways to create a VPN is using cloud services. The best part is that you won't have to maintain or audit anything.

Algo VPN is the best choice if you want to create a disposable VPN solution. Other than that, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Digital Ocean are other options for you to consider.

You may have to install some dependencies, run some commands, set your VPN profile up, and play with the access keys a little bit while setting up your VPN server.

Creating a VPN using cloud services can have its cost, but you won't have to deal with anything and there's no third party involved. 

Create a VPN On Your VPN-Enabled Router

To create a VPN using this method, you'll need a router that has VPN functionalities in it. It's just a normal router, but it has the capability to host a VPN server.

You'll have to follow some linear system-specific steps to easily create a VPN on your router.

Just visit the configuration page of your router and head to the VPN section.

You can either search for your router's manual and get help from there.

Follow the instructions and set up your own VPN server on the router.

Create a VPN By Flashing Router Firmware

This is the alternative way to create a VPN on a router if it doesn't have built-in VPN functionalities.

By flashing your router's firmware, you're simply installing a new operating system that will enable the VPN feature and you'll be able to host a VPN server on the router.

The only thing you need to check is whether your router has the compatibility to support any third-party firmware like OpenWrt or DD-WRT. Once that is confirmed, flash your router's firmware cautiously to avoid any mid-process errors.

Once the router firmware is flashed, the VPN feature will be available on your router and you can create a VPN server easily.

Create a Dedicated VPN Server

To create a dedicated VPN server, you need a device that would be running all the time.

You might need to install a third-party VPN server, like OpenVPN. You can do this on any platform (Windows, Mac, or Linux). 

You can even use a Raspberry Pi device with OpenVPN to create a lightweight and low-cost VPN server. It works fine and there would be no latency issues.

Just set up port forwarding, create a connection, allow the users you want to give access, configure the firewall settings to allow remote connection to your network, and set up a VPN connection on your PC.

You're all set to host a VPN server.

Disadvantages of Creating a VPN

Hosting your own VPN server is a good idea but there are some technical drawbacks you might want to consider.

• Poorly configuring a VPN might expose your online identity on the web if your VPN starts leaking your IP Address or DNS.
• Creating a VPN requires good internet speed. If you have bad or average internet, then hosting your VPN server might further slow down your internet connection.
• You need to update your VPN with the latest patch and maintain everything on your own.
• You won't have the choice to connect to multiple VPN servers.

You should be able to create your VPN server now. Although the wise choice would be to get a third-party VPN service so you can escape all the additional efforts of maintaining your VPN server.

 

5 Surprising Benefits of Virtual Private Network for Your Business

With 4,354,264,849 Internet Users in the world, the internet manages 3,264,309,665GB data every single second which includes 121,454,179,412 emails and 3,193,257,825 Google searches every single day. So how do these numbers affect you as a business owner?

Well, chances are that you and your employees communicate over the internet internally or externally. All kind of data is shared among the team as well as clients.

With the increase in data usage, the internet is becoming a scary medium. Business is vulnerable to cyberattacks and data breaches. Cybersecurity Ventures predicted that by 2021, annually cybercrime will cost the world $6 trillion. Having said that, any breach or leak of your business information can create huge damage to your brand and cost you millions.

A VPN forms a tunnel to block unusual threats in the day to day online business data transfer systems. So let's discuss the 5 surprising benefits of using a VPN for your business.

Ø  Public Wi-Fi

Remote work culture is becoming more popular across the globe. To get the work done, it's no longer required to be at your desk all the time. People prefer to work from co-working space, home, cafe and even from the beachside. Remote workers are bound to access the internet with the public Wi-Fi connections available in those places.

However, it’s not popularly known that using public Wi-Fi is actually really dangerous, you are always in a threat to get hacked quite easily. Hacking public WiFi is just a simple Google search away, in fact, a 7 years old kid hacked public WiFi in 11 mins. The danger of using public WiFi is real, hackers commonly create fake hotspots and steal the data from the connected devices.

To avoid such a hassle, you can use a simple VPN solution to safeguard your sensitive data. By connecting through VPN you immediately create an encrypted tunnel to the internet. The risk of getting hacked is not entirely eliminated, but anyone trying to intercept your online activities through the insecure WiFi will be find out that the data they intercept is meaningless as all they get to see is encrypted garbage.  

Ø  Support Remote Workforce

If remote work is the future, the future is here. As per the report of Remote, 66% of organizations allow remote work and 16% are fully remote. In the UK 4.2 million adults regularly work from home. With the growing trends, companies have started providing work from home to reduce the commute time and for the ease of working from anywhere and anytime.

For improving the security and privacy of your business data, make it mandatory for your workers to use a VPN. With a high quality VPN provider like NordVPN, your remote workers can create secure online connections to your business information from anywhere across the globe. The most crucial purpose of a VPN is to secure the communication between the user and the business computer network.

Ø  Online Research

We live in an era of the internet. Many businesses are not restricted to a single geographical location. Any company can go out and do business in any place and every place across the globe when the internet comes into play. But to succeed in a different region you need to know the online competition. Who are top-ranking competitors, what kinds of google ads and content are they using?

Being in Boston you won't be able to perform a local search of Barbados. Here you can use a trustworthy VPN providerto check local search results. With the help of a VPN, you can change your online location without being tracked and monitored by a search engine such as Google, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo Bing so and so forth. You can switch between countries and cities consistently without being blocked. 

Ø  Bypass IP Banning

In this competitive business world, every entrepreneur aims to level up their game. There is no shortcut available, you can do it the old school marketing way. But if you want to scale up rapidly, you have to get into aggressive marketing mode on the online platform. Content needs to be published across the channels very consistently. Due to aggressiveness, platforms like Facebook, Forbes, and Reddit detect users IP’s and block their activities. This stops your effort of being consistent.

However, technology is your best friend. If your business is using Virtual Private Network, you can easily get through this blocking. By connecting to a VPN server, along with your current location, your IP address is also changed. Having said that now you change your IP address to eliminate tracking, monitoring and blocking of any website. Go out and distribute as much content as you like.

Ø  Utilize Geo-Targeting

These days geo-targeting is becoming common practice to deliver custom content based on a customer’s geo-location. Multi-language website targets multiple countries in the native language as per the region. Delivering content in the regional language can be very beneficial to increase conversion rate and build a brand across the globe. 

To achieve this, you can utilize a VPN to know how your competitors are doing in a particular region, and analyze their local strategies. VPN won't just help you understand your competitors but also analyze your geo-targeting efforts. By using an effective business VPN solution, you can strategically create effective content plans that help you increase your business revenue in any region across the globe.