How to Increase VPN Security: Best Practices for Maximum Protection

While a VPN is an excellent cybersecurity tool, it isn’t an all-in-one solution. If you want maximum protection online, it’s important to know what a VPN can and can’t do and how to set one up properly. 

If you think that sounds daunting, it’s not. This article clears the fog surrounding VPN security measures and gives you tips for making one of the best cybersecurity tools even more secure.

How Does a VPN Protect You? 

 A VPN is one of the best tools available for protecting yourself online, but it can’t protect you from every threat. Let’s look at what a VPN can and can’t do.

Does a VPN Protect Your Online Data?

Yes, a VPN is an excellent tool for online data protection. When you connect to a VPN, it encrypts your traffic and masks your IP address. This makes your data unreadable to anyone monitoring your connection and obscures your location. A trustworthy VPN will also have a no-logs policy, which means it never collects information about your online activities. 

Does a VPN Protect You from Viruses and Other Malware?

Not directly. A VPN can stop hackers from spying on your online activity, but if you click on a malicious link, download an infected file, or visit a dangerous website, a VPN won’t stop malware from getting onto your device.

Some VPNs include extra features like ad or malware blockers. For example, PIA MACE helps block access to known malicious domains. Still, these tools aren’t designed to detect or remove viruses.

Antivirus software is specifically designed to detect, block, and remove malware – it scan files, monitor your system for suspicious behavior, and protect you in real time. For full protection, it’s best to use both a VPN and an antivirus.

Does a VPN Protect You from Hackers?

A VPN hides your IP address and protects your traffic with strong encryption. This scrambles your traffic into undecipherable code, reducing your visibility to cybercriminals and making your data useless to them. 

What a VPN can’t do is protect you from social engineering or human-assisted attacks. If you aren’t up-to-date on all the latest phone (vishing), email (phishing), and SMS (smishing) scams, you could be tricked into giving away sensitive information to someone posing as a trusted contact. 

A VPN also doesn’t protect data you willingly enter into websites or apps – like login credentials, payment info, or messages – especially if that data is stored insecurely or mishandled by the service provider. If a service provider’s servers are hacked, your information could still be exposed, regardless of whether you used a VPN.

Does a VPN Prevent Tracking?

Yes, a VPN helps prevent tracking by masking your IP address and hiding your geographic location.

Your ISP assigns your device an IP address when you connect to its network, which can be used to determine your geographic location. For example, if you’re in New York, your ISP’s servers will likely be in New York, and those servers’ IP addresses will be registered to the same location. This means it isn’t hard to track your general location when you’re online. 

A VPN reroutes your traffic through any server you choose on its network. The server provides you with a new IP address, masking your original one in the process. This protects your privacy by making it harder to trace your location.

6 Ways to Make A VPN More Secure

1. Choose a Secure VPN and Set It Up Properly

Look for a VPN with strong encryption, tunneling protocols like OpenVPN and WireGuard, and a strict no-logs policy. If you’re serious about protecting your online data, these features should be non-negotiable. 

Additional VPN security measures and privacy features you should look for include:

• RAM-only servers: These run entirely on temporary memory (RAM), so they don’t store any data on a hard drive. Any information that passes through these servers is wiped every time the server restarts.
• Open-source code: This means the code is available to inspect and verify at any time, demonstrating full transparency. 
• IP/DNS leak prevention: This helps ensure your DNS requests and location remain private by preventing IP/DNS leaks.

When setting up your VPN, check your settings for key security features to enable, like:

• Kill switch: Stops all network traffic when the VPN connection drops, so no data leaks outside the encrypted tunnel.
• Auto-connect: Automatically connects the VPN whenever you join an unsecured or new network, ensuring you’re always protected without having to remember to turn it on.
• Multi-hop (or Double VPN): Routes your traffic through two servers for extra layers of encryption and anonymity (but it may slow down your connection).

2. Install Antivirus Protection

If your VPN doesn’t offer antivirus protection as an add-on option, installing a separate antivirus app is a good idea. Antivirus software continuously scans your device for threats like trojans, worms, and malware. 

Once these programs detect a threat, they may hold it in quarantine or automatically remove malicious files. This eliminates the threat and keeps your device free of malware and viruses that can hijack your operating system, steal data, or damage your device.

3. Create Secure Passwords

To create a strong password, make sure it’s 12+ characters long and includes a mix of capital and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Never use any part of your name or any other easily discoverable personal information (e.g., high school, birthdate, social media names, etc.), and avoid using sequential or repeated characters or keyboard patterns (e.g., 1234, ABC, 2222, qwerty). 

Never reuse the same password for multiple accounts because once an account has been exposed, the username and password combination can be bought and sold by criminals on the dark web, putting other accounts at risk.

4. Use 2FA

Using two-factor authentication (2FA) for your accounts gives you a secondary level of security over standard username and password logins. After entering your login details, you’ll receive an SMS or phone call with a one-time password (OTP) or a push notification from an authorization app, which can also use biometrics to verify your identity.

Because you need to be present to confirm your identity via phone, SMS, or biometric data, 2FA makes it much harder for someone else to access your account without your permission.

5. Educate Yourself About Online Scams

Since using a VPN can’t protect you from scams, staying informed of the latest threats is a good way to make VPN use more secure. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has excellent information regarding common frauds and scams, including elder, cryptocurrency, romance, tech support scams, and other social engineering attacks.

You can also use the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) to report a scam, and you should notify your local law enforcement as well. While local authorities may not be able to recover stolen money or lost data, they can warn others in the community about similar scams. Criminals are always trying new tactics, and the more we share information about their methods, the better everyone can protect themselves from fraud.

6. Stay Safe on Social Media

A VPN can’t secure information you make readily available to the masses, like the information you make public on social media platforms. To get the best security and privacy, you should limit the amount of information you put on the internet to begin with, especially anything that could identify places of employment, schools, or home addresses. 

Social media and content platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube all provide security and privacy features, but they often aren’t enabled by default. If you’re not careful, they’ll use everything you share to target ads, promote partners, and tailor content based on your activity – essentially tracking you.

For maximum privacy, remove ad personalization and disable watch history on video content services. Ensure your phone number, location, and email are set to ‘friends’ or ‘only me’ on social media platforms. Better yet, don’t put that information on social media sites at all.

Bottom Line: Start with a Secure VPN

The first and most important thing you need to do is choose a VPN that prioritizes security with secure protocols, strong encryption, and a no-logs policy. If you back it up with malware-blocking tools and educate yourself on protecting your online information, you’ll maximize your online security and privacy.

PIA VPN has a strict no-logs policy, verified by independent audits and open-source apps, making it one of the most secure and transparent VPNs out there. It also includes a built-in ad, malware, and tracker blocker called MACE. This gives you multi-level protection that makes online security less daunting. You can try PIA VPN risk-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

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