In the past 10 years, the volume of financial cybercrime has increased exponentially. In 2013, Reuters.com reported that a single ring of cybercriminals stole approximately $1 billion from more than 100 financial institutions across 30 countries.
I am not a fear-monger trying to scare you. I’m here to give you a solution that will ensure your online security when shopping, banking, transferring funds, and using your financial information online for other needs.
A VPN for online banking ensures that online transfers, purchases, social media activities, and all other activities are secured every step of the way. These are top-tier VPN providers that provide heavy-duty encryption and are compatible with all devices and operating systems including smartphones, tablets PCs, and Macs running on Android, Windows, iOS, Linux, etc.
These all-purpose VPN services are ideal for online banking security needs – particularly in light of the push-over cyber defense mechanisms that today’s banks seem to have in place.
The So-Called Banking Security Framework
Most financial institutions in the developed world have established IT security frameworks for inter-banking and customer banking needs. Irrespective of this fact, GoGulf.com detailed statistics in an info-graph that estimates a colossal $120 billion in cybercrime losses by 2017.
Banking institutions claim HTTPS secure web pages, encrypt transfer activity, put up firewalls and allow for two-step verification for their online banking services. While all of this is true, there is not much a bank can do if its own network is infected with malware and Trojans. This way hackers can identify prominent accounts, high-volume trading companies, and clients who make large-scale transfers frequently.
How Banking VPN Help Secure Online Activity
A VPN, in essence, was merely a remote connection software meant for businesses who wanted employees to access the work network from a different country, city, or locale. Lately, VPN services have taken the form of security tools designed to protect user data, personal identity, and information transfer over public/private wireless networks.
In a survey by the New York State Department of Financial Services (May 2014), 154 financial institutions were sampled to establish how secure, prepared, and capable their IT security frameworks were to handle cybercriminals. When asked about the top barriers against ironclad online security, a large number of the 154 organizations responded that cybercriminals were using highly sophisticated malware to steal money and information.
A Virtual Private Network enhances security by linking (or tunneling) your connection to a foreign VPN server. For example, I reside in Cardiff and connect with a VPN to a server-based in the Netherlands. This will ensure that all my traffic is routed through the Dutch server and my IP address will be reassigned to one that belongs to the Netherlands.
Pro-Tip: One very crucial step to take before banking online under the security coverage of a VPN is to inform the bank’s customer services that you will be using encryption tools to access their service.
Using a Banking VPN for Identity Protection
The first benefit of using a banking VPN is that it will always hide your local IP address and replace it with one from the host server usually based abroad, even in the case of a local server you will be assigned an IP address from another city.
A tunneling protocol complements encryption by routing all traffic through a secured tunnel once it is ciphered and sent through the servers of the banking VPN service. This is easily demonstrated by the following diagram.
Essentially, all your traffic is sent through the encrypted VPN tunnel and then forwarded to the global internet from there. Cyber threats, government surveillance programs, and ISPs will not be able to see anything beyond the connection with the VPN server.
Bank in Privacy with a Banking VPN
Secured VPN online banking also hides your entire web activity ensuring no one, and I mean no one can access your surfing history and the information you transferred during those sessions. This is achieved through encryption algorithms and tunneling protocols that are the backbone of a VPN for banking.
Encryption algorithms are used in banking VPN tools to ensure that whatever is being transmitted to and from your devices is encoded in combinations of binary numbers (0 and 1). The ciphering or coding depends on the key standard used, which can vary between 128, 192, 256, 1024, and 2048 keys. Your data is then decoded at the destination using the same encryption algorithms.
A 128-bit key would mean that your financial and personal details will be encoded using the statistical possibilities equal to 2128 (equates to 3.4028236692093846346337460743177e+38 with a calculator). What these numbers mean in simple language is that the person who steals your data will have to go through more than a zillion combinations to decode your information (it takes the fastest supercomputer in the world to do this in approximately 5 years).
Conclusion: Keep Calm and Bank Online with a VPN
The use of Trojans, phishing email, network DDoS attacks, and man-in-the-middle techniques utilized by cybercriminals are only a few examples of how financial information is stolen from banks, organizations, and home users like you and me. A banking VPN is not only helpful for banking but also for using social networks, email, and unblocking geo-restricted streaming services across the world. Read through our best banking VPN reviews, trial a few services, and take your pick to bank online from anywhere in the world.
Amongst the many high-speed VPN providers available today, you will find many other benefits in the best VPN for banking. These include DDoS attack prevention, NAT Firewall Protection, and protection of financial information on multiple devices with one account.
