Earlier this week, VPNCompare published its latest guide on how to work safely (and sanely) from home during the coronavirus crisis.
It seems that lots of people have been listening to our tips, particularly the importance of using a VPN when working online.
According to one of our top recommended VPNs, NordVPN, searches for the term VPN are up around the world and sales are spiking as well.
The coronavirus effect
An analysis of Google Trends shows that in the past week, the number of people searching for the term VPN has grown exponentially.
In the UK, there were 20% more searches for the term over the past seven days. This is actually quite a bit lower than in other countries where the coronavirus crisis is at a more advanced stage.
In the USA, searches for the term VPN on Google are up 25%, in Germany the increase is 30%, in Spain 40%, and in Italy, which is the worst affected western country at the time of writing, has seen a spike of 55%.
For NordVPN at least, this spike in searches is also converting into increased sales. They have seen an increase in sales of 40% over the past seven days and the number continues to grow.
As Daniel Markuson, a digital privacy expert at NordVPN Teams has said, “By today, this number has quadrupled as more countries are announcing quarantine and office workers choosing remote work.”
What is NordVPN Teams?
NordVPN Teams is the name of the business offering from NordVPN, which is already one of the most popular and highly regarded personal VPNs on the market.
NordVPN Teams offers a full range of features to provide small and medium enterprises, freelancers, and remote teams with a convenient and powerful digital protection tool.
If you sign up for NordVPN Teams, you will benefit from all the main features of NordVPN’s regular VPN and more. It offers advanced 256-bit encryption, ad and malware blocking, unsecured traffic prevention, automatic connection on Wi-Fi networks, and a 24/7 customer support service that includes a dedicated account manager.
For individuals, a regular subscription to NordVPN or one of our other recommended VPNs will be more than sufficient to keep your online working environment safe and secure.
But if you run a small business and need to find a VPN solution for your whole staff then a service such a NordVPN Teams is going to be a much more suitable and cost-effective solution.
Why you need to use a VPN when remote working
In an office environment, everyone is connected to the same network and it is therefore much easier to keep the online environment secure and for staff to communicate with each other privately and safely. It also means that shared resources can be stored and shared locally and securely.
Remote working means that every employee is accessing resources through the public internet. In this environment, it is much harder to get the same levels of security but the need for companies to keep sensitive information and communications secure is no less important.
Using a VPN can deliver much of that protection. It encrypts everything you do online to stop hackers and other prying eyes from being able to view and intercept what you and your staff are doing online.
Many larger businesses use corporate VPNs. These are good but can be too expensive for smaller businesses and in the current environment, setting one up from scratch is far from ideal.
Corporate VPNs all have to be manually installed onto each device. At a time when we are all supposed to be ‘social distancing’, this requirement is potentially risky.
But cloud-based VPNs like NordVPN have no such requirements. Both NordVPN and NordVPN Teams can be downloaded remotely. The process is easy enough for even the most technologically illiterate to follow and it only takes a few minutes to do.
Another big advantage of choosing a cloud-based VPN is that new clients can be added to the VPN very easily meaning your business can get remote-working fast.
“At NordVPN Teams, we are working in three shifts and connecting up to 200 new users per hour,” explained Daniel Markuson. “We are also expanding our server network to satisfy the growing demand for cloud-based VPN services.”
VPNs vital during quarantine
While most people are focused on keeping their family, friends, and the most vulnerable members of our society safe from the coronavirus, there are still some out there who are looking to take advantage of the situation.
There has already been plenty of media coverage of people who are selling hand sanitiser and toilet roll at inflated prices.
Many hackers will also be seeing it as an opportunity as well. With an increase in the number of people working from home, there will be far more opportunities for them to exploit online security weaknesses.
Just like you don’t want to catch the coronavirus, you also don’t want to fall victims to hackers either. So, do everything you need to do to stay safe. Follow government health advice to the letter, and always use a VPN when working online.
