What is Hardware VPN?
Setting up a VPN, a cybersecurity tool, allows you to obtain a secure tunnel online and enables you to obtain access to private, centralized networks while being outside that network. VPN is one of the best ways to ensure that your network is safe and secure.
There are various types of VPNs, like hardware VPNs and software VPNs making it quite perplexing to understand these technical terminologies. In this article, we will explain what a hardware VPN is.
What Does A Hardware VPN Mean?
In layman’s terms, when talking about a hardware VPN, we usually talk about physical, standalone, and single devices. These devices are equipped with their steadfast processors, firewalls, encryption, and authentication.
These devices are also capable of obfuscating you from public networks and are a much more secure network infrastructure model than a software VPN. It also means that the physical location displayed due to this VPN would be different from your actual physical location.
These VPN solutions come with isolation capabilities which means they can also hide your IP address. It also eliminates the chances of user errors and misconfiguration because there is nothing to configure in the first place!
How Are They Advantageous?
A hardware VPN simply eliminates the need to use an expensive and dedicated server. They are generally applicable to enterprises with the requisite of firewalling several users with a single router. Apart from saving costs, a hardware VPN provides the same network security to all the users.
With a hardware VPN doing its work, you do not have to worry about the bandwidth as it automatically ensures that all the users get the network bandwidth. It also offers network load balancing. Wondering how this helps? Now, providing this balance effectively keeps the network bottleneck to a bare minimum.
This type of VPN also helps in boosting the productivity of large companies. Since there is little to no network delay, all the work processes and tasks executed by the users are carried on without interruptions.
A hardware VPN also reduces the workload on the IT department of a company because there would be no need to consistently look for updates once the initial setup has been completed.
Is There A Downside?
Everything that comes with a hardware VPN can prove to be quite advantageous to your users; however, the investment factor can be a downside. Installation of a hardware VPN can prove to be an expensive matter. In addition, a hardware VPN also puts an upper limit on the number of VPN tunnels you can create and is tedious to maintain. Therefore, weigh the pros and cons before making your decision.
Summing It Up
It is of utmost importance to secure your network to prevent a data breach or leakage. You can utilize the help of cyber security tools like a hardware VPN to fortify your network strength. This not only relieves you of your stress but also provides you with a stable bandwidth. Hardware VPNs are highly beneficial to large organizations with a higher budget and a dedicated team that can oversee the maintenance of the VPN solution.