encryption protocol

VPN APPs: What are the most important features to have?

— -5 actionable tips that work for all — -

Using an internet connection without a VPN in place has its shortcomings. Ranging from security issues to data throttling and data selling without consent, using a VPN to overcome these threats while online has become increasingly popular nowadays. It is safe to say that VPNs are a thing of mainstream culture today, rather than an exotic tool for all the right reasons.

A few years ago, adopting a VPNwas not the simplest of tasks for IT managers for a number of reasons which included: deployment, compatibility or interoperability issues and the expense of these systems. Things have changed. VPNs are now entering the mainstream, and many companies view them as a telecommunications necessity from both security and cost perspectives.

Originally designed to reduce the costs of connecting branch offices to the main office of a business, VPNs addressed the concern of high costs of leased lines and dedicated connections. The next matter-of-course step was to adapt VPNs to individual remote use, for internal network access and secure operations across the internet.

Widely used by companies to protect corporate data, Virtual Private Networks took over the personal data arena, as well, to such a degree that the use of a VPN has become an almost inalienable, “basic right”, for virtually any kind of private data exposed to the internet.
Beyond connectivity a VPN implicitly means that a secure bridge has been created between any given device using that connection and your business server and that can be on your premises or in the cloud.

FEATURES TO LOOK FOR:

Photo Credit: Gabriel Silveira illustrator

However, there is still a level of abstract that goes into a VPN connection, especially the ones designed via cloud, since it’s an intangible product and often little know in terms of what aVPN connection should offer as features. As VPN providers ourselves we listed some of the most important features that make the whole VPN concept a bit more streamlined. When choosing a VPN provider we also recommend reading reviews for specific feed back from people who already tried that VPN app.

* ENCRYPTION*

They say that a VPN is only as good as its encryption capabilities, but encryption in itself is not the simplest of topics. The terminology used to determine how secure a VPN connection is, can get very confusing, very quickly.

OPEN VPN CYPHERS

AES- 128, the Open VPN Cipher used by My IP.io, remains secure as far as the AES in general is regarded (AES stands for Advanced Encryption Standard- right above AES-128 is the 256-bit keys — also known as the AES-256, which is basically the same encryption standard adopted by the U.S. government and used by security experts worldwide to protect classified information.)

The mathematics of the 128 bit AES goes to show that a billion billion years are required and a supercomputer for a brute force attack to crack it. With this in mind we say that 128 is pretty impressive on its own.
PPP

In a remote- access VPN, tunneling typically relies on Point-to-point Protocol (PPP). When searching for VPN apps you should come across one of these three protocols based on PPP:

L2F (Layer 2 Forwarding) — Developed by Cisco; uses any authentication scheme supported by PPP;
PPTP (Point-to-point Tunneling Protocol) — Supports 40-bit and 128-bit encryption and any authentication scheme supported by PPP;
L2TP (Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol) — Combines features of PPTP and L2F and fully supports IPSec; also applicable in site-to-site VPNs

Credit Photo: Adrià Fruitós — illustrator

SECURE SHELL — SSH

SSH, also known as Secure Socket Shell, is a network protocol that provides administrators with a secure way to access a remote computer. SSH also refers to the suite of three utilities that implement the protocol: — slogin, ssh, and scp — that are secure versions of the earlier UNIX utilities, rlogin, rsh, and rcp.
My IP.io comes bundled with a variety of VPN encryptionprotocols, supporting all the latest security protocols including SSTP, PPTP, IPSec, L2TP, SSTP and 128bit –AES, OpenVPN cipher.

AUTO-RECONNECT AND PORT FORWARDING

One exciting feature is also port forwarding that enables you to connect to considerably more seeds/peers. The disadvantage of port forwarding is having an open port in your firewall, which always carries some security risk, so as a rule, it is best to have as few ports open as possible.

TRANSPARENCY

Always go with the VPN provider that is most transparent about things like: logging and the privacy policy they have in place.

KILL SWITCH

This is a feature that will make sure your IP Address isn’t accidentally exposed in case of a dropped connection with the VPN server. It can react virtually instantly, block your internet connection before your computer has a change to reconnect to the internet outside of your secure VPN tunnel.

LOCATION SWITCH

If you are more of the globetrotter typology than the security oriented one or a combination of both, then watching the Olympics live while they happen is a thing for you. For bypassing geo restrictions that your local networks might have for remote gaming or remote working, or listening to location-restricted streaming internet radio a good VPN means a location diverse server list you can chose from.

Geared with brand new locations from California to Florida, from United Kingdom to Germany or Australia to Japan, My IP.io comes with brand new locations to chose from.

Introducing a much more location diverse dedicated VPN service, our latest server acquisitions are located in:

USA California
USA Oregon
USA Ohio
USA North Virginia
USA Florida
Brazil
United Kingdom
Germany
Australia
India
South Korea
Singapore
Japan

Now that you know how to address the “location” aspect of a VPN, remember that My IP’s latest server locations were hand-picked to deliver the most reliable speed. We continuously update our server locations by analyzing numerous data points, among which: Connection success rate, Customer usage and Speed.

SPEED

It is a known fact that major mobile network operators purposely curtail the speed of your connection in order to limit the amount of data you consume. Sometimes as low as 32 kbps.

Using a VPN hides the kind of traffic you’re using, so ISPs can’t discriminate against high-bandwith ones — Netflix and possibly other streaming services like Hulu or YouTube can fall into the same category. Major companies like Verizon or Comcast have previously used these practices.

When choosing a location it is also important to check things like: Speed Index, Latency, and Download Speed, as these are all important factors.

This is what they mean:

Speed Index: shows how fast the VPN server is; the higher the number, the better the server.

Download Speed: it tells you how fast your VPN server is able to download information; also the higher, the better.

Latency: it’s the time it takes for a data packet to go from your device to reach the VPN.

You can also check the speed of your VPN here.

All in all, we can’t really imagine or sometimes even function outside the online paradigm, from accessing sensitive data at work, to hailing a cab, to social media, to online shopping, we’re putting a lot of corporate or personal data out there in what has become a too easy to be felt routine.

All this data is subjected to government snoop, hacking and “hacktivism” and evensimple browsing can be susceptible to data trawling. You don’t have to be a security advocate to understand the necessity of using a VPN while online, but simply a privacy minded person in a strictly monitored environment or in a completely open one, it makes no difference, really.

My IP.io, the platform of choice for many agile businesses, trusted brand by thousands of happy business owners.

MyIP.io is a self-managed VPNnetwork platform, delivering fast, secure and reliable VPN service , designed with the professional focus in mind. Our platform caters to a wide demographic through three channeled directions:Personal,Dedicated and Business, so it makes for a wonderful choice for corporate or personal use at the same time.

Engineered as a global platform,MyIP.io is a VPN service provider committed to developing applications and services that preserve an open and secure Internet experience while respecting user privacy.

WannaCry Ransomware Attack crippled a lot of data. Guess who’s not crying? VPN users

Photo Credit: www.behance.net

Last Friday, WannaCry “ransomware” cyber attack struck globally in what has become one of the fastest –spreading extortion campaigns on record. The virus infected more than 300,000 machines in 150 countries since Friday and the victim numbers continue to grow. In this very moment, someone could be clicking a link or activating macros in a malicious document. A few seconds later, the entire hard disk content, personal files and sensitive information, everything including cloud storage accounts synced with PCs could be locked for good. Or for a good tidy ransom. A pop up in bad graphic could then appear on screen asking for “cold hard cash” in return for a decryption key.

If this is what you’re experiencing, well then tough luck. You’re device has been infected with WannaCry. Guess who’s not crying? All those people who are using a VPN. That thing you could never quite grasp the importance of. But wait! How is this even possible, how frequent these things can happen and could they happen to me? you ask.

Ok, let’s give some context and background to the story for clarity.

The first ransomware attack struck in 1989, almost 3 decades ago. It’s hard to fathom now, but the virus spread via floppy disks and involved sending $189 to a post office box in Panama. AIDS Trojan was the WannaCry ransomware from back in the day.

But ransomware attacks are believed to have broader implications in much more than just making money, as they have been used as tool in cyber battles of political substratum, the attacks on Sony Pictures Entertainment — in retaliation for the comedy film “The Interview” is a telling example. The hacker attack was aimed at Sony Pictures for the satirical comedy directed by Seth Rogen, that involved a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Who knew a Seth Rogen film could get this “inflammable”, right?

Well if we think that the attack is believed to being launched by Lazarus Group, allegedly a North Korean run hacking operation is starting to make sense.

Technical clues found in the code of WannaCry ransomware by researchers could link to the same North Korean group. However, no conclusive proof have been found for a clear conclusion in any of the aforementioned attacks.

If in the case of Sony Pictures cyber attack, the goal was to prevent the release of The Interview, a film that mocked a North Korean leader, in contrast WannaCry was wildly random infecting everything it could.

WannaCry didn’t seem to have a pecuniary goal, with more than 200,000 machines infected and around $70,000 paid in ransoms, it’s a terrible return.

Analysts are now turning to another hypothesis, maybe the ransom was a distraction for a political goal that has yet to clearly surface.

And here’s were things get really confusing and could take a really steep turn for the left so brace yourself for what I will reveal in the following of what the political implication could be

Brad Smith, President of Microsoft Corp, confirmed in a blog post on Sunday that WannaCry attack made use of a hacking tool developed by the NSA (US National Security Agency) that had leaked online in April. This pours fuel on the long running debate over espionage and cyber warfare conduct and software flaws best kept secrets.

Elevating the subject far beyond the immediate need to improve a computer defenses, the WannaCry attack has turned into a political debate in Europe and the United States with discussion of the role national governments play.

Since China was among the worst hit, it seemed unlikely to some that Lazarus was behind all this, as antagonizing North Korea strongest ally would not hold as a good strategy. Having been speculated as having an implication, Russia denied all accusations, but Putin did not waste the chance to draw attention on the NSA in the light of Smith’s revealing on the topic.

If this story is not in the realm of a true Matrix scenario unfolding, then I don’t know what is. But just as Neo is looking for a way to Zion, you too could be wondering for the same path.

These days data that is a day old can usually be recovered, but potentially losing real time data for even 24 hours can produce massive damage for a company, for example, just like a lack of oxygen to the brain.

Unless you have a back up, which companies usually have, but most people don’t, you can be faced with a cyber attack that could damage tones of done work, memories stored on picture or film or well put together playlists that took years to build.

Here are the most common infection methods used by cybercriminals.

· Spam email campaigns that contain malicious links or attachments

· Security exploits in vulnerable software;

· Internet traffic redirects to malicious websites;

· Legitimate websites that have malicious code injected in their web pages;

· Drive-by downloads;

· SMS messages (when targeting mobile devices);

· Botnets;

· Self-propagation (spreading from one infected computer to another)

SOLUTION:

In all cases prevention is the best thing you can do. Considering how intricate these attacks are in the large scheme of things is better to take the matter into your own hands and not wait for government to regulate. Besides, do you really trust the government with your personal data? Just a question.

Remember we talked about VPNs at the beginning. Did you know that having a VPN in place can protect your computer from remote attackers? All attacks will stop into the VPN vendor.

Having a robust VPN to encrypt your personal data is nowadays, the only way to Zion.

Across the world, businesses use VPNs to connect to remote data centers, or for employees to connect remotely to the physical network of their workplace, while individuals can use VPNs to get access to network resources when they’re not physically on the same LAN (local area network), or as a method for securing and encrypting their information from the potential liabilities that lie ahead once exposed to unsecured networks such as public WiFis or hotspots.

REASONS YOU SHOULD START USING A VPN APP. NOW:

· PROTECTS YOUR DATA FROM REMOTE ATTACKERS

your internal data, sites, git repositories, banking credentials and all information will be coated in multiple layers of encryption;

· REMOTE ACCESS

as IT is being challenged to enable safe access to employees remotely by providing mobile VPN, secure email, encrypted containers and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), living outside the data security paradigm is simply not smart anymore, whether we’re talking about corporate or personal data;

· IP CAMOUFLAGE

A simple VPN download gets you a new location identity so that you can use geographically dispersed resources;

· BYPASSING FILTERS AND GEORESTRICTIONS

Bypassing Internet censorship in countries where censorship is applied;

· SHARING FILES

You can share files and sensitive information inside a secured group away from prying eyes;

MyIP.io is a self-managed VPN network platform, delivering fast, secure and reliable VPN service , designed with the professional focus in mind. Our platform caters to a wide demographic through three channeled directions:Personal,Dedicated and Business, so it makes for a wonderful choice for corporate or personal use at the same time.

“MyIP.io is the result of the craftsmanship of our engineers, with many years of experience supporting large-scale, custom deployments for businesses , telecommunications companies, multi-service operators and enterprises.” Dave Wilson, CEO My IP.io

— -5 actionable tips that work for all — -

FEATURES TO LOOK FOR:

* ENCRYPTION*

*AUTO-RECONNECT AND PORT FORWARDING*

*TRANSPARENCY*

*KILL SWITCH*

*LOCATION SWITCH*

*SPEED*

AUTO-RECONNECT AND PORT FORWARDING

TRANSPARENCY

KILL SWITCH

LOCATION SWITCH

SPEED