Do You Need An Enterprise VPN?

Consumer VPNs and enterprise VPNs are not the same. They both provide virtual private networks, but they have markedly different use cases. The features you need in a business VPN aren't on a consumer's VPN shopping list. A consumer looks for a desktop or mobile app. They want secure, encrypted tunnels to hide their IP address and network traffic while browsing the web at home or in public settings.

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Consumer VPNs shield users' online activity from their Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Using a consumer VPN service makes it safer to access online banking, telehealth, payment card information, or other web portals that access, authenticate, or exchange data.

Consumer VPN adoption has seen a dramatic increase as of late, mostly because of concerns over online privacy. ISPs can sell your data, advertisers watch your every move, and even law enforcement takes advantage of weak encryption standards. A survey from the cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes found that 36% of consumers now regularly use VPNs, roughly a 34% jump from a decade ago. Among non-VPN users, Malwarebytes also reported that 58% of people said they were familiar with the technology.

In contrast, enterprise VPNs offer a more sophisticated, robust, and purpose-built array of features. One of the most common use cases for an enterprise VPN is providing access for remote workers, but that's just the starting point.

What Is an Enterprise VPN?

If you've ever searched what is a VPN, you already know the basic idea: an encrypted tunnel that hides your connection. An enterprise VPN takes that same core concept and builds it into infrastructure a whole business can run on. Instead of one person hiding their IP address, an enterprise VPN connects an entire distributed workforce to the applications, servers, and data they need, while giving IT teams centralized visibility and control over who gets in.

That distinction matters more than ever. For a closer look at why organizations can't get by on consumer-grade tools, see our breakdown of the essential reasons businesses require robust VPN solutions. And as networking architecture evolves, VPNs haven't disappeared — they've become a building block. Our guide to the integration of VPNs within SASE frameworks explains how.

What Makes Enterprise VPN Different from Personal VPNs

Three things separate enterprise VPN solutions from the app you'd download for personal use:

• Centralized control. IT administrators manage access from a single console — provisioning, revoking, and auditing connections across every employee, device, and location instead of relying on individual users to configure their own settings.
• Stronger encryption. Enterprise VPN service tiers rely on business-grade protocols, more frequent key rotation, and higher default encryption standards than most consumer apps offer out of the box.
• Identity integration. Rather than a standalone login, an enterprise VPN ties directly into your existing identity infrastructure, so access decisions are based on who a user is, not just what device they're on.

Key Enterprise VPN Features

The best enterprise VPN solutions share a common feature set built around control, security, and manageability:

• Role-based access control — restrict what each user or group can reach based on job function, not blanket network access.
• API integrations — connect your VPN to existing IT and security tooling so provisioning and monitoring aren't manual processes.
• Compliance support — look for vendors that can help you meet frameworks like SOC 2 and HIPAA, which is table stakes for a corporate VPN solution handling regulated data.
• Secure remote desktop access — great VPN software should also protect protocols like RDP; see our guide on securing remote desktop protocols effectively for what to look for.

Types of Enterprise VPNs

Not every commercial VPN solution is built for the same job. Most organizations end up using one — or a combination — of the following:

• Site-to-site VPNs connect entire office networks or data centers to one another, so employees at different locations can share resources as if they were on the same LAN. Compatible routers make this possible without a client installed on every device; our guide covers configuring site-to-site VPN connections in detail.
• Remote access VPNs connect individual users — typically remote or hybrid employees — to the corporate network from wherever they're working. This is the model most people picture when they think of a remote access VPN, and it's the backbone of most modern enterprise VPN services.
• Hybrid VPNs combine both models, linking offices together while also giving individual remote workers secure access — a common setup for growing businesses with distributed teams and multiple locations.

How to Choose Your VPN

Choosing the best enterprise VPN solution — and scaling it — comes down to matching your deployment model, security posture, and access flexibility to how your organization actually works, whether that means investing in on-prem hardware or moving to a cloud-native architecture built for remote access from day one.

Deployment Models

The first decision is whether to self-host or go cloud-native, and it usually comes down to IT capacity, customization needs, and your organization's internal security policies. Teams with dedicated infrastructure and specific compliance requirements often prefer more control; teams that want to move fast without managing hardware tend to lean cloud-native. For a full breakdown, see our comparison of comparing VPN deployment options.

OpenVPN Access Server is our self-hosted software VPN server. Business customers deploy Access Server on their own network infrastructure — these self-hosted servers can be physical or virtual, on-premise or in the cloud. This makes it a strong fit for teams that want a dedicated, best enterprise VPN appliance-style deployment without being locked into proprietary hardware.

Access Server can be deployed as a do-it-yourself option on a Linux server, or launched on a virtual private server with your cloud provider of choice — Amazon Web Services, Azure, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, or Oracle. It lets you customize access control for employees to meet precise network security requirements.

For organizations that would rather skip the infrastructure management entirely, managed enterprise VPN services like CloudConnexa offer a cloud-native, serverless alternative — with global mesh distribution, ready to scale without provisioning a single server.

Security Considerations and Real-World Threats

Like consumer applications, enterprise VPNs encrypt and tunnel traffic to the VPN server, making an employee's device part of the corporate network and giving it secure access to everything available at work. That encryption matters most for employees connecting from home ISPs or public WiFi — networks at coffee shops, hotels, and airports are higher-risk without a VPN, since most public WiFi still relies on WPA2, an encryption standard vulnerable to “key reinstallation attacks,” or KRACKs, that make it possible for attackers to intercept traffic and steal credentials.

When evaluating an enterprise VPN service, look past headline encryption specs and check three things: protection against man-in-the-middle attacks on untrusted networks, the strength and modernity of the underlying protocol, and broad, well-maintained client support across the devices your team actually uses. For a deeper look at hardening your deployment further, see our guide to advanced techniques for fortifying your VPN.

Integration with Authentication Systems

An enterprise VPN is only as secure as the identity behind each connection, which is why identity enterprise VPN integration should be near the top of any evaluation checklist. Buyers should look for multi-factor authentication, single sign-on, and compatibility with the identity tools you already run — whether that's Google MFA, Active Directory, RADIUS, or LDAP — so access policy lives in one place instead of being duplicated across systems.

Remote Access Flexibility & Device Support

Distributed teams need cross-platform support that doesn't get in the way — Android, iOS, Mac, Linux, and Windows clients that are easy to deploy and even easier for employees to actually use. OpenVPN's solutions are built for that flexibility, supporting everything from site-to-site VPN and device-to-device connections to user-to-cloud access for remote services, IoT, and VoIP configurations — so the same platform can flex to whatever mix of use cases your business needs.

Secure Your Business with an Enterprise VPN

Deployable as a self-hosted server or a serverless, out-of-the-box cloud-native solution, OpenVPN's products are adaptive, next-generation networking tools for the modern enterprise. In the post-pandemic era, there's no going back to the way things were — digital transformation and distributed teams are now the default, not the exception.

That means organizations need corporate VPN solutions that protect an attack surface that's grown exponentially with the rise of remote work. As employees bring their own devices onto employer networks, the risk of ransomware and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) exploits grows with it. OpenVPN is an intuitive, customizable option that helps keep enterprises operational and secure against MITM exploits and other breaches of network integrity — whether on-prem or in the cloud, self-hosted or serverless, at any scale, anywhere in the world.

Ready to see which setup fits your business? Book a demo with the OpenVPN team, and we'll help you find the right enterprise VPN solution for your organization.

Access Server

OpenVPN Access Server is our self-hosted software VPN server. Our business customers deploy Access Server on their network infrastructure. These self-hosted servers can be physical or virtual, on-premise (on-prem) or in the cloud. 

This self-hosted application can be deployed as a do-it-yourself (DIY) option on one of your Linux servers, or launched on a virtual private server with your cloud provider, whether that’s Amazon Web Services, Azure, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, or Oracle. Access Server enables you to customize access control for your employees to meet precise network security requirements.

Administrators can define access control by IP address, protocol, or port. Access Server also integrates with multiple authentication schemes, including multi-factor authentication, RADIUS, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), Active Directory, Privileged Access Management (PAM), and Google MFA. 

Our VPN client, OpenVPN Connect, is available for mobile devices (Android, iOS) and multiple operating systems, such as: Mac, Linux, and Windows devices. 

Access Server covers five primary use cases:

1. Provides employees with secure access to enterprise servers in any environment where they may exist, on-prem or in the cloud. 
2. Offers customers site-to-site connectivity using OpenVPN protocol-compatible routers to bridge disparate enterprise networks and public cloud environments.
3. Protects remote desktop and screen sharing protocols with strong authentication and network access controls.
4. Offers robust encryption protocols to securely encrypt data transmitted by point-of-sale transactions and telemetry signals.
5. Enforces zero trust access through identity-driven policies, strong authentication, strict destination controls, and access control lists.

CloudConnexa  

If Access Server doesn't fit the needs of your enterprise, CloudConnexa, our cloud VPN offering, may be a more user-friendly option. For SMBs and divisions within large enterprises, the OpenVPN-managed cloud solution allows you to safeguard your resources in a controlled, adaptive, and scalable manner, while complementing and extending the value of your current network strategy — all at a fraction of the cost and provisioning of other approaches and without the headache that comes with legacy VPNs focused purely on remote access and connecting resources. With security features like unique domain routing and DNS-based content filtering you get an elegant, secure solution that can both scale to the largest global networks, and is designed with the cost and simplicity required by small and mid-sized businesses alike. All with end-to-end visibility across your networks.

The CloudConnexa mesh is distributed globally, with connection hubs in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, South Africa, and over a dozen other countries in Europe, Australia, and Asia. You can deploy CloudConnexa via multi-site, user-to-site, or user-to-user network delivery channels for private networks.

It can help you secure your connected devices or VoIP nodes across private networks, whether on-premise or in the cloud. CloudConnexa can also secure P2P, IoT, and VoIP device control via its device-to-device configuration. 

Deploy CloudConnexa to secure cloud resources, enhancing the security of virtual private cloud (VPC) networks across disparate office locations. It can also satisfy the needs of user-to-cloud networking applications, providing end users with remote access to services localized in IaaS repositories.