Suzaku Consulting | Rise Again

Choosing the right VPN

In today’s flexible work environment, securing your company’s network is no longer just a technical chore for the IT department, but rather a strategic decision that directly affects your profitability. Whether your staff are reviewing confidential contracts from home, connecting to cloud servers on the go, or accessing central databases across the UK, keeping company data secure is absolutely vital to continue trading.

However, choosing a Virtual Private Network (VPN) can quickly become confusing. The market is filled with contrasting options ranging from cheap consumer mobile apps to complex, custom-built server scripts and fully managed enterprise platforms.

In this guide, we will strip away the jargon to explain how modern VPN technologies work, compare three common deployment approaches, examine the financial return on investing in proper network security, and explain why personal or poorly managed “DIY” setups often end up costing businesses far more than they save.

The Engines (VPN Protocols)

At its simplest, a VPN creates a private, encrypted ‘tunnel’ through the internet between a device and your company’s network. What happens inside that tunnel depends on the protocol i.e. the software engine that governs how data is packaged, encrypted, and transmitted.

OpenVPN

OpenVPN has been the traditional standard for secure business connections for over two decades. It relies on open-source encryption libraries to protect data.

  • How it works: OpenVPN runs primarily as the logged on user. This means data packets must constantly move back and forth between the computer’s core operating system and the OpenVPN application before they can be sent across the network.
  • Performance: Because of this constant translation, OpenVPN needs more processor power. On high-speed connections or busy servers users may notice slower internet speeds, increased latency, or significant battery drain on laptops.
  • Cryptographic Agility: It supports dozens of different encryption methods (such as AES-256 and RSA). While this flexibility makes it adaptable, it also means the software codebase is massive: hundreds of thousands of lines of code. This creates a larger area for potential software bugs or security flaws.

WireGuard

Designed from scratch to replace bloated legacy systems, WireGuard was merged into the Linux operating system in 2020.

  • How it works: WireGuard runs directly inside the computer’s “kernel space”. Data passes straight through the core network system, eliminating bottlenecks.
  • Performance: Connections establish almost instantly. WireGuard delivers exceptional performance while using far less battery power and CPU resource.
  • Minimalist Codebase: WireGuard consists of around 4,000 lines of code compared to OpenVPN’s 100,000+ lines. This compact footprint helps it stay secure and performant.

NordLynx

While stock WireGuard is extremely fast, it was originally designed without built-in features for managing large business teams (such as dynamically assigning addresses to staff logging in from different locations).

NordLayer addresses this with NordLynx:

  • It retains the high-speed engine and encryption of WireGuard.
  • It adds an enterprise management that allows WireGuard to be more easily managed for businesses of all sizes.
  • Staff get top-tier connection speeds without you having to sacrifice centralised control.

Three Ways to Deploy a Business VPN

To understand how these technologies work in practice, let us evaluate three common setup choices available to UK companies.

Option A: DIY (e.g. WireGuard on OVHcloud)

One approach for very technical internal teams is renting a low-cost virtual server from a host like OVHcloud and manually installing WireGuard.

  • The Technical Setup: An IT engineer installs the software, creates encryption keys, and writes custom server rules to route traffic to the internet or company servers.
  • The Practical Advantages: Costs are low in exchange for an admin overhead, and connection speeds are fast.
  • The Hidden Reality: Every new team member requires a manually generated config file sent to their device. If an employee leaves, an administrator must manually log into the server command line to revoke their key. There is no central dashboard, no single sign-on integration, and no simple way to enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA).

Option B: Public Cloud Infrastructure (e.g. OpenVPN on AWS or Azure)

Another route is running an OpenVPN Access Server instance inside a cloud platform like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure.

  • The Technical Setup: A virtual machine is launched inside your cloud network, connected to your cloud storage and databases, and configured with digital security certificates.
  • The Practical Advantages: The VPN sits directly alongside your hosted business applications, giving remote staff close proximity to corporate databases.
  • The Hidden Reality: You pay for software user licences alongside hourly server compute costs, cloud storage, and monthly data transfer (egress) fees. IT teams must also spend time managing security certificates, renewing domain keys, and applying operating system patches. It costs much more in overheads.

Option C: NordLayer (SME friendly platforms)

NordLayer replaces custom server management with an enterprise-ready, cloud-native platform, which is easy to adopt.

  • The Technical Setup: Instead of building server hardware, you deploy a network on the website. Employees download an app and log in using their existing work credentials. Done.
  • The Practical Advantages: Setup takes minutes rather than days. Administrators get a central control panel to assign permissions, enforce security rules, set up dedicated company IP addresses, and monitor network health without touching server software.
  • The Hidden Reality: Offers a predictable monthly subscription fee with no additional overheads, and completely removes maintenance and hardware overhead.

Return on Investment (ROI)

If the ROI of a purchase can’t be explained clearly, it often isn’t worth investing in. Security (and especially network security) is incredibly important for businesses of al sizes, with NordLayer offering near-instant payback and ROI.

  • Payback = time it takes to recoup ‘value’ from your spend
  • ROI = time or money saved, or earned, over a period of time

Instead of having all the overheads of fixed costs and maintenance, and the expertise, to build a DIY or self-hosted solution, it makes sense to leverage an off the shelf VPN instead.

Using NordLayer lets you get setup in minutes, instantly securing your internet access. While a VPN isn’t an antivirus, you still don’t want people snooping on your bank details or client communications, on public wifi such as in hotels.

Not wasting Engineering Time

When an internal team builds and maintains a custom VPN server, they are not just paying for server space, they are using up expensive engineering hours on routine maintenance:

  • Updating server operating systems and applying emergency security patches.
  • Troubleshooting broken routing configurations or dropped connections.
  • Manually issuing and revoking access credentials for JMLs.

Protecting Productivity and Uptime

When an unmanaged or under-powered VPN server crashes or runs slowly:

  • Remote staff are blocked from accessing files, client databases, and billing systems.
  • Customer support and operational tasks grind to a halt.
  • Staff lose hours troubleshooting connections instead of working.

A managed service provides dedicated infrastructure and high availability, with wraparound expertise, at very little cost. An added benefit is that eliminating connection slowdowns and unexpected downtime keeps your team working efficiently.

Preventing the Financial Impact of Cyber Incidents

The financial consequences of a network breach go well beyond what most people imagine:

  • Regulatory Fines: Under UK data protection laws (UK GDPR), failing to adequately protect personal data during remote transmission can lead to substantial financial penalties.
  • Operational Disruption: Cyber incidents often force businesses to shut down core operations for days or even weeks, and hurt your reputation and business relationships.
  • Reputational Loss: Most security incidents can irreparably damage client trust and result in lost work, and lost clients.

Why to Avoid Personal VPNs

When trying to keep costs low, businesses are sometimes tempted to allow employees to use consumer VPN apps or personal accounts. This is a mistake.

Personal VPNs apps can be variable in quality, lack controls or centralised billing, and can in fact expose you to greater risk of security incidents.

Not every personal or free VPN is benign, in fact some of the less reputable providers have poor security or outright snoop on your activity.

1. The “No-Logs” Paradox: Privacy vs. Accountability

Consumer VPNs market “Strict No-Logs Policies” to protect personal privacy from tracking.

For a business, however, having zero central logs is a major liability. If a security incident occurs, or if an auditor asks who accessed a specific folder of client files on a given date, a consumer VPN cannot tell you.

Enterprise solutions like NordLayer provide centralised logs and visibility over network access without impeding on your security.

2. The Offboarding Oversight

What happens when an employee leaves your company?

  • With NordLayer: Disabling their primary corporate account (e.g., in Microsoft 365) instantly revokes their access to the VPN and all internal systems all at once.
  • With a Consumer VPNs: A leaver may retain active VPN credentials, and someone leaving on bad terms may be minded to use this access to hurt your business.

3. IP Chaos and Blocked Websites

Consumer VPNs share a IP address across thousands of individual users simultaneously.

If another user on that VPN app behaves maliciously, security systems (such as on banking portals) will quickly block the address. When you try to work, endless CAPTCHA security checks will hamper your work, or you will be outright locked out of business applications such as email.

NordLayer avoids this by offering Dedicated Gateways with static IP addresses. Your company gets its own private address, allowing you to restrict access to sensitive business software so that only connections from your business internet address are allowed in.

4. Loss of Control over Data Sovereignty

Under UK privacy regulations, businesses must ensure personal data is handled responsibly and stays within approved legal jurisdictions. Consumer VPNs often route traffic through overseas servers without warning, such as Russia or China.

If confidential client data is routed through a foreign country with weak privacy laws, your organisation will inadvertently breach UK data protection law and may be fined if found out.

Conclusions

While building a custom VPN on hosting services like OVHcloud or public cloud platforms can work for isolated technical projects, they aren’t SME-friendly. Using these setups to manage remote staff introduces unnecessary risk and high maintenance costs.

At the same time, relying on consumer VPN apps leaves dangerous security gaps and may in fact put your business at greater risk. Depending on off the shelf solutions which are reputable, secure, and cost-effective is the best way forward.

NordLayer bridges this gap by delivering:

  • The blazing speed of modern WireGuard technology.
  • Seamless integration with your existing company logins.
  • Dedicated UK static IP addresses to keep company software secure and accessible.
  • An intuitive central control panel that saves your IT team time and money.

How Suzaku Can Help

We believe technology should empower your business, not complicate it. We help organisations evaluate their network security, eliminate unnecessary technical complexity, and deploy solutions that deliver clear financial return and peace of mind.

Whether you want to modernise your existing remote access, move away from clunky legacy systems, or ensure your network satisfies modern security expectations, our team is here to guide you.