Page 26 - 11Cyber

What Is a VPN, and Do I Need One?

By Joel Ewing, President, Bella Vista Computer Club

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. When your The logical behavior from the viewpoint of your device
computer or mobile device uses a connection to a is as if your device were directly connected to the In-
VPN service, your device behaves as if it were con- ternet through an Ethernet cable at the remote VPN
nected to the Internet at the remote VPN service server location. Your device is even assigned a LAN
location, and all your traffic on the Internet appears IP address on the remote site LAN. Others on the Lo-
to others as if it originates at that remote location. cal Area Network to which your device has physical
attachment will be unable to establish connections in
In actuality, the Internet service to which you are
physically connected is used to establish a secure or out to your device while the VPN connection is ac-
encrypted connection to your remote VPN service tive, and anyone seeing your data traffic either on
over the Internet. While the VPN service connec- your physical LAN or as it passes through any routers
tion is active, your device is configured to reject any and the associated Internet Service Provider, will only
other direct network connections, so all inbound see that you are communicating with your VPN ser-
and outbound data flows through that encrypted vice and be unable to read the encrypted data con-
VPN "tunnel" to the VPN server. The VPN server tent. Note that if you are communicating insecurely
then establishes the final part of the path to the with some website (like http vs. https), your communi-
data's intended destination. Data that needs to be cations will still be vulnerable on the Internet between
returned to your device flows over the Internet to the VPN Service and the destination website.
the VPN server and then passes hidden over the Reason for Using a VPN
VPN tunnel back to your device.
(Continued on page 27)

Cyber Awareness Bulletin 26 October 2021