What is a VPN?

 

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. It is a method of adding security to private and public access to the internet. It is often used by companies to protect data from being hacked by black hat hackers. The use of personal VPN is now becoming more popular as the public is becoming aware of the danger involved in the “open” type of access to internet data with only a single password access.

In VPN, a user’s initial internet access is replaced by an encrypted provided by a VPN provided.

Take a look at the following video on “What is a VPN?”

 

 

In order to understand VPN or virtual private networking, let us go back into history and see how the internet was created. The internet was created by the US Army, Navy and Air Force to enable every part of the national security office to stay connected to each other through routers even when any one computer got “killed” when say a nuclear war. The internet communication could then be re-routed to another server automatically and the communication system stayed intact.

The problem with this router system is that, from a computer security standpoint, any hacker can somehow get into the communication traffic and can collect all of the information he wants about us. He can see what we are doing, which websites we have visited, what our passwords are, and so on.

So, a VPN is a security system whereby data we transmitted through the Internet is encrypted so that an interceptor cannot understand what our data means.

=== === ===

Now let us take a look at another interesting article about China trying to crack down on censor-busting services using some sort of reverse-VPN system:

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38718066

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38718066