How to Protect Your Company's VPN When You Have a Remote Team

According to statistics, more than 4.7 million people work remotely in the USA. With employees accessing their company’s networks from home, security experts believe that company networks are highly susceptible to breaches, potentially toppling entire businesses.

However, to minimize the threats faced to an organization’s networks, security teams have taken it upon themselves to urge their remote workers to VPN while accessing their company’s network.

VPN has transcended in status and has become a staple mode of communication within enterprises. As an increasing number of employees rely on VPNs to secure their vulnerable connections, it is up to organizations to account for the cybersecurity challenges that this upsurge in VPN usage may entail.

Fortunately, however, in an attempt to aid the readers in navigating the threat landscape amidst these turbulent times, this article focuses on the challenges that arise with increased VPN use. Moreover, it also included effective solutions that hopefully enable readers to circumvent their VPNs from threats, cyberattacks, and vulnerabilities.

Challenge Number 1: Using Outdated VPNs

Cybercriminals have always considered VPNs an attractive target; there are still multiple unpatched (read: exploitable) servers today. Further bearing witness to the gravity of the situation is an alert issued by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA), which warned organizations of cybercriminals exploiting the Pulse Secure VPN vulnerability.

Despite the warning sent out by the CISA, most VPN providers have been rather lazy with rolling out new patches simply because there wasn’t a lot to worry about. Without the upsurge of remote workers, VPNs were primarily used by business travelers, security geeks, or individuals looking to access geo-restricted content. It means that the traffic passing through the VPN was pretty much insignificant compared to the total traffic generated by the network. While the minimum amount of traffic passing through VPNs may be enough for VPN providers to procrastinate on releasing new patches, IT security teams delay the release of VPN patches because servers patch more slowly than application servers or desktops.

With the sudden spike in the number of remote workers, several organizations have failed to update their VPNs at the required pace, opening an easily exploitable entry point for malicious identities.

What Can Organizations Do to Overcome This Challenge?

To ensure that hackers aren’t exploiting any vulnerabilities present within an outdated VPN server, an organization’s IT security team must patch all VPN servers, firewalls, and routers as soon as possible.

It is also recommended that security teams engage in threat hunting, which refers to scrutinizing your company’s network for any signs of malicious activity. If executed correctly, threat hunting enables enterprises to identify the security loophole that allows hackers to access their system and offer them the chance to rectify it. By conducting threat hunting regularly, organizations can stay on top of the bad actors accessing and exploiting their networks.

Challenge Number 2: VPNs Can’t Prevent DDoS (Distributed-Denial-of Service) Attacks

If there ever were a cyberattack that exploited every vulnerability present within VPNs, it would be a DDoS attack, which focuses on overwhelming an organization’s network with an influx of internet traffic, which the bad actors typically generate.

Cybercriminals can exploit VPNs through DDoS attacks by injecting minimal TCP packets into an organization’s network. It also takes down firewalls and other preventative measures that the company may have put in place. Moreover, it is also worth mentioning that since these TCP packets target SYN, ACK, and URG flags, respectively, the chances of the DDoS being detected is next to zero since they have no bearing on the volumes or threshold of VPN generated internet traffic.

VPNs are also highly vulnerable to SSL flood attacks. It is a type of cyberattack that focuses on exhausting the VPN server by bombarding it with many SSL handshake requests. Since likely, the VPN server won’t be able to keep up with the massive number of requests; cybercriminals now have an entry point into the company’s network.

What Steps Can Organizations Take to Prevent DDoS Attacks?

Companies must formulate a security plan which accounts for the vulnerabilities that ultimately lead to DDoS attacks. The most significant step that security teams can take to circumvent these distributed attacks is strictly monitoring the traffic passing through their VPN connection.

However, it is worth mentioning that the monitoring that we’re referring to goes much deeper than your standard, run-of-the-mill surveillance. To minimize the probability of DDoS attacks, companies must monitor the VPN connection on all the different devices relevant to their organization, keeping an eye out for any abnormalities in threshold numbers.

Moreover, suppose an organization wishes to determine any irregularities in their threshold. In that case, they must first have to have an acute understanding of their regular VPN traffic in terms of both the volume it generates and the number of connections that are to be expected. Although this may be quite an arduous task, it can be easily accomplished with a SIEM (security information and event management) tool.

Challenge Number 3: VPNs Offer Cybercriminals An ‘Easy’ Way to Intrude Into An Organization’s Network

As already mentioned above, VPNs are the favorite targets of hackers. If you bypass a VPN connection, you automatically gain access to the entire contents of an organization’s network. What makes the prospect of exploiting the vulnerabilities present within a VPN even more exciting for cybercriminals is that often, companies don’t bother to create any segmentation for their VPN use, which opens up new avenues for hackers to exploit.

In most instances, hackers take advantage of this lack of security and expertly sneak their way into an enterprise’s network, gaining access to an arsenal of confidential information and every security resource they can manipulate into causing damage to the network.

What Can Be Done About This Security Problem?

Companies can ensure that hackers steer away from their secure networks by monitoring their VPN usage frequently. The easiest way to survey their VPN connections is to utilize a dashboard, which keeps an eye on all critical parameters, including details about the login sessions of all connected employees.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully, at the end of the article, readers are equipped with all the necessary knowledge to prevent malicious agents from exploiting their VPN connections! However, it is still critical for each employee to exercise cyber hygiene to ensure cybersecurity for the long run!