Few areas of the world of technology have grown as rapidly as the virtual private network (VPN) industry in recent years, even though the concept has been around for a quarter of a century. Designed to preserve privacy online and help bypass internet restrictions, services like ExpressVPN and NordVPN have been on the rise in the wake of incidents like the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which opened public eyes to the internet's reach of data collection. modern data. In territories with strict internet laws, VPNs have also played a central role in unblocking online resources and fighting misinformation. And those qualities took on new meaning during the pandemic, which some regimes used to smuggle through surveillance initiatives and censored new regulations on the web. Due to these factors, according to Statista data, the VPN market is expected to be worth more than €75 billion by 2027, which would represent a three-fold increase in less than a decade. However, while the major VPN platforms have gained attention in recent years, the technology's early applications had little to do with online privacy and fighting censorship; in fact, the roots of the VPN lie in the business world.
The VPN was born
The first instance of VPN technology can be traced back to a Microsoft engineer named Gurdeep Pall, now one of the company's corporate vice presidents. In the mid-1990s, Pall and his team were working on a mechanism to securely access corporate data from outside the office. The solution they came up with eventually became known as Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP), which is still in use today, albeit in an outdated fashion. "We were working on remote access solutions so that users could connect through modems and connect to their corporate networks," he told TechRadar Pro. "The first form of what became VPN was created to test emulated modem connections between the client (caller on the machine) and the server (gateway to the corporate network) using circuits/tunnels over IP/Ethernet". "When the TCP/IP stack shipped in Windows NT and Windows 95 and every business was now directly connected to the Internet, and users had broadband at home, we adapted that approach to become PPTP."
(Image credit: Shutterstock/Dizain) Around the same time, says Pall, the professional VPN industry took off "like a hockey stick" and PPTP became the default protocol due to the fact that it came with every device. with Windows. To this day, PPTP is still one of the fastest VPN protocols ever developed. Although its 128-bit encryption is considered highly insecure by modern standards, the protocol is still applied in cases where speed is more important than security, much to Pall's surprise.
The underlying technology
However, since the advent of PPTP, several new VPN protocols have been developed, all of which offer a slightly different set of attributes. The OpenVPN protocol, for example, rose to fame in the early 2000s as a versatile and highly secure alternative, with 256-bit encryption over OpenSSL. Unlike many other VPN protocols, it is also open source, which means that its code is available for anyone to use and scrutinize. "Modern VPNs really stepped out of the open source movement by creating a public forum where open source developers could mingle with crypto experts and create security software with the same transparency and peer review that exists in the global academic sphere. "James Yonan explained. OpenVPN founder and CTO. “By opening the source code, we invite security researchers, hackers, cryptographers, etc. examining the code for flaws and weaknesses, and the resulting product was strengthened by this critical feedback." This philosophy has helped establish OpenVPN as a dominant force in the VPN market, but another booming open source protocol called WireGuard is starting to knock on the door.
(Image credit: OpenVPN) The goal of any encryption protocol is to provide the highest levels of speed and encryption while consuming as few computing resources as possible. WireGuard was developed with this principle in mind, offering higher throughput speeds and shorter ping times than OpenVPN and operating on just 4000 lines of code. However, while VPN providers like CyberGhost and PIA have introduced support for WireGuard, many others are taking a wait-and-see approach. Generally speaking, higher encryption speeds mean less security, and some vendors worry that WireGuard won't be as stable as more mature projects. Other VPN providers, like ExpressVPN, have developed new protocols specifically for their respective services. Perhaps unsurprisingly, ExpressVPN claims that its Lightway protocol is faster and more reliable than other alternatives. Freed from legacy features, Lightway is comprised of just 1,000 lines of code, which means it takes only fractions of a second to establish a VPN connection. The origins of the first VPN protocol may be in business, but in recent years this type of innovation at the protocol level has been largely driven by the explosion of the consumer market.
Catalysts for change
It's hard to pinpoint a single trigger for the rise in consumer VPNs, in part because trusted providers don't collect the types of data that could be used to analyze these trends. However, the consensus among the experts we consulted is that general awareness of the issues surrounding online privacy and data collection has created significant demand where previously there was very little. The Edward Snowden leaks (2014) and the Cambridge Analytica scandal (2018) are believed to have played a significant role in alerting the public to the types of data that private companies and government agencies are collecting. For the first time, people also understood that there was no free food; that online services have an invisible cost that they may not want to pay. “With daily headlines reminding us that companies and governments collect our personal data without our informed consent and then misuse or store it, it is no wonder that consumers around the world are increasingly protecting their data. in recent years". said Harold Li, vice president of ExpressVPN. Another driver of growth in the consumer VPN market, Li says, is the spread of Internet censorship, particularly in Asia and the Middle East. «Le VPN a toujours is an essential tool for digital freedom, and after Internet censorship exists, people use VPNs to access information, work and connect with their families and friends», nous at -el he says. “More and more Internet users are feeling the effects of various governments that are tightening their control over the digital world. People are realizing the need to take control of their privacy and security online. "In recent months, for example, traffic to VPN websites has increased in response to discussions of a possible TikTok ban in the United States and the outbreak of the military coup in Myanmar.
Former US President Donald Trump threatened to ban the social media app TikTok last year, leading to increased interest in VPNs (Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images) According to Dominykas Dimavicius, manager For VPN provider Surfshark, the correlation between privacy breaches and the growth of the VPN industry has also created a snowball effect. “The general trend is that any news related to surveillance, tracking, censorship and anything else related to the unsolicited exploitation of people's right to privacy is pushing the industry up,” he said. -Declare. With more vendors coming into the space to combat these types of issues, Dimavicius said, competition in the market has gotten fiercer. In turn, increased competition has sparked massive investments in marketing, public relations, and education initiatives, driving the cycle forward.
Stay true to your roots
While consumer VPN services have experienced the most spectacular growth in recent years, the technology also remains relevant in its original context, in the enterprise. Some have prophesied the death of the professional VPN, but the pandemic has cemented its place in the tech stack. Organizations operating in the space are aware of the weaknesses of technology in a business context, that is, in security and scalability, but they also believe that technological solutions are capable of solving problems. “In fact, we are seeing strong growth in enterprise VPNs, and at OpenVPN we are leading a major R&D effort to modernize VPNs for the cloud,” Yonan said. "This means moving the OpenVPN data plane into the kernel to improve performance and add additional layers of security, such as SAML authentication and malware blocking." “This is a complete virtualization of the Internet itself, where you can still run the same applications and services, but now the virtualization aspect gives you full control over security and management, including encryption, authentication, access control, routing , DNS, malware . blocking, geolocation, etc. This concept is echoed in part at Perimeter 81, a business-focused VPN provider that believes that Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) integration will help provide the necessary levels of security. “There is no denying that security holes VPN security highlight the fact that, yes, the traditional hardware VPN must evolve to a cloud-enabled model that can scale efficiently, support the security of cloud-based resources, and provide better visibility. in network activity," said Sagi Gidali, CPO. "SASE enables the delivery of secure, integrated network security services that support enterprise digital transformation, advanced computing, workforce mobility, identity management, and accesses In addition to improving...