Cloud VPNs: They’re not just for the consumer market!

Cloud VPNs: they’re not just for the consumer market!

VPNs are nothing new for businesses – they offer a secure way to connect into corporate IT environments from anywhere and ensure access to company data even on public and unprotected connections. Traditional VPNs, which route traffic through a corporate on-premises infrastructure, have seen heavy usage as remote and hybrid working has grown in popularity. But a number of key weaknesses have also emerged as a result of changes in working practices, which have brought an increased reliance on collaboration tools and cloud platforms.

Latency caused by routing a connection through an organisation’s on-prem infrastructure impacts collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, turning lag from a minor inconvenience to a major impediment to productivity. And, as your customers increasingly take a cloud-first approach to their IT, having an on-prem infrastructure to connect to is no longer a given.

But that doesn’t mean the security a VPN offers is no longer needed.

You’re likely already helping your customers secure endpoints in their organisation and deploy security measures into their cloud environments, but a sizeable unsecured gap remains between the two, as the connection into cloud infrastructure is left unsecured. Cloud VPNs can help to address this, connecting your customers to their applications through a secure private cloud.

It's Nord, but not as you know it.

One of the most popular cloud VPNs in the consumer space is Nord Security’s NordVPN. But while your customers can use this consumer-focused product, it lacks the capacity for centralised management and security policy enforcement that any business cybersecurity measure ought to have.

Enter NordLayer – a VPN with a host of cybersecurity features designed for business use. NordLayer takes the base of NordVPN, and re-packages it into a business-ready solution better suited for commercial use cases, while also introducing new features to help build it into a comprehensive cybersecurity offering.

The key benefit compared to the consumer offering is centralised management. Your customers can set organisation-wide policies for the VPN or leave options open for users to toggle as they prefer. For example, if your customer needs to ensure that remote workers are always using a VPN to protect sensitive company data, they can toggle NordLayer’s VPN to be always-on, removing the need to activate it and preventing the user from accessing the internet without their VPN enabled.

While an always-on VPN may seem like it would cause significant latency for end users, NordLayer’s architecture avoids this, enabling users to connect to a local Nord Security datacentre, rather than corporate infrastructure that may be located in a different country. NordLayer’s high-speed servers also allow for connectivity up to 1 Gbps, compared to the much lower speeds of most traditional VPN solutions. This means that your customers can use applications that require low latency connections – like Microsoft Teams - while the VPN connection is still active.

Your customers also stand to gain from the ease of NordLayer’s deployment. The solution can be set up in just 10 minutes, and works across multiple operating systems – including mobile – so it can be used to secure all devices across a business. A plethora of different SSO integrations also streamline the experience for end users, who can log in to NordLayer using the same accounts they’re using for cloud-based applications – including Microsoft Entra ID.

But what about corporate VPNs?

While NordLayer shines in securing users connecting into cloud-based applications, its capabilities go far beyond. By enabling site-to-site connections between your customers different networks, NordLayer uses the resources of the public internet to create a private connection between different offices and sites, removing the need for a more traditional VPN to route between corporate networks. Peer-to-peer connections are also much easier – even for remote workers – allowing for rapid collaboration between users, even if they’re spread across different locations.

NordLayer also boasts a range of additional cybersecurity features, going above and beyond the protection offered by a VPN. For customers looking to implement a zero-trust network architecture (ZTNA), NordLayer works as a great foundation, supporting network segmentation and security to ensure that potential attackers can’t get far if

they breach a corporate network. On top of this, the solution supports a range of different identity and access management (IAM) strategies, including biometric and multi-factor authentication.

If you’re interested in offering NordLayer to your customers, we’re here to help. Our expert team can help with the deployment of NordLayer across your own organisation, and your customers. What’s more our 24/7 support can help both you and your customers make the most of this innovative cloud VPN. Get in touch with the team today to find out more.

For more information, contact a member of our team today at cloud@exertis.co.uk.