The internet of today is a world apart from the internet of the 2000s and even of the 2010s. New industries and new technologies yield new online risks, and changing legislation only serves to make it more difficult for web users to navigate the ‘net safely.
One of the longer-standing dangers of browsing the internet is that of IP tracking – wherein bad actors online can identify your IP address and track your online movements, behavior and transactions. Needless to say, this can be a serious problem for individuals who put themselves at risk of cybercrime like phishing scams, financial fraud, or even extortion schemes. However, IP tracking exposes businesses to even more risk. Here, we’ll explore what those risks are and how VPNs are crucial to mitigating them.
Why IP Tracking Is A Risk for Australian Businesses
IP addresses are number strings used to identify individual web-accessing devices on the Internet. On their own, they are not defined as personal information; this is because they do not contain meaningful data about the owner of the device. But where that IP can be attached to other information, such as in certain logs, IP addresses can become personal information – and even sensitive, accordingly. IP logs are legally required to be retained by businesses under Australia’s Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Act 2015, for at least two years.
Again, this does not constitute the collection of personal data on its own, but where IP addresses are held alongside personal identifiers, they are. And this sensitive information poses a serious risk in the event of a breach. Where cybercriminals can identify a specific IP as a specific staff member in a business, they can then target that staff member to profile them in aid of phishing or other cyber-scams. This threatens the broader safety of sensitive information in a given business.
How VPNs Reduce IP Tracking and Network Targeting
If IP tracking is a real concern for employees in your business, then one of the simplest solutions in your arsenal is to obfuscate the traffic associated with their IP addresses. This is where a business VPN comes in useful. Simply put, VPNs are a middleman for your business’s access to the web; they encrypt traffic, mask source IP addresses behind a VPN gateway, and limit direct exposure of your office or cloud IP ranges to the public internet. They do this, essentially, by spoofing your location.
Hear, it is worth making something clear: a VPN can reduce third-party tracking and make it harder for attackers to tie activity back to specific endpoints, but this does not mean a VPN guarantees complete anonymity. VPNs are not altogether useful for other tracking methods, be they cookies, application telemetry, or geolocation data.
Implementing VPNs Securely
With this in mind, then, a VPN should be one rock-solid part of an otherwise rock-solid digital security regimen. There are various aspects to building such a regimen, but a VPN is a good starting point – and a good lens through which to explore best practice for using the internet on a business’s behalf. The VPN itself should be accessed via multi-factor authentication, VPN appliances should be kept updated, and logging and monitoring of VPN activity should be an internal standard.