Why VPN connections help secure your company’s infrastructure

VPN connections help secure your company’s infrastructure because servers no longer have to be exposed directly to the internet: employees reach them through an encrypted tunnel, after an extra authentication step.

According to a study published in 2020 by RiskRecon, 33% of companies exposed network resources that anyone could access freely from the internet.

Data servers, application servers and the other important components of your infrastructure shouldn’t be freely accessible, directly from the internet. That’s also why IT support companies use VPN connections to access infrastructure from outside the office.

More often than not, ports are left open to the internet, and hackers can easily exploit them.

RiskRecon checked more than 40,000 systems belonging to companies and public institutions. The services most often exposed to the internet were MySQL database servers, followed by the Remote Desktop (RDP) service. The recommended, simple way to eliminate this vulnerability is to use VPN connections.

In tests carried out at universities, 51.9% of servers were directly accessible from the internet.

How does a VPN connection help?

VPN connections let users access infrastructure resources as if they were physically at the office. A VPN adds a layer of security, because you authenticate with a username and password plus an access key, a certificate or, preferably, two-step verification (MFA).

Traffic through the VPN tunnel is encrypted, so malicious people can’t intercept it along the way, for example at router level. And on top of the credentials for the application server or the database, you also need the VPN credentials.

When we talk about security, we also mean a healthy dose of paranoia. A good policy is to restrict access as much as possible and to make certain services accessible only when needed, through secure methods.

Is a VPN still a secure solution in 2026?

Yes, if the VPN device is kept up to date and protected with two-step verification. In recent years, VPN devices and firewalls have become one of attackers’ favorite targets: between 2023 and 2025, serious vulnerabilities in products from major manufacturers (Fortinet, Ivanti, Citrix, Palo Alto Networks, Cisco) were exploited on a large scale, and many ransomware attacks started with a VPN account that had no two-step verification.

What this means in practice:

• update the VPN device’s firmware as soon as the manufacturer publishes a security fix;
• turn on two-step verification for all VPN accounts;
• give each user access only to what they need, not to the whole network;
• close the VPN accounts of people who leave the company;
• don’t expose Remote Desktop (RDP) directly to the internet: access goes through the VPN only.

More and more companies are moving to “Zero Trust” (ZTNA) solutions, which verify the user and the device at every connection and give access only to the app that’s needed, not to the whole network, as a classic VPN does.

See also why your company needs a high-performance VPN solution and the difference between a router, a firewall and a UTM.

RezolvIT is an IT outsourcing company that takes the data security of the companies it works for very seriously. We propose and implement system updates and protection, Backup as a Service and IT security, with both software and hardware solutions.