Remote access & VPN

Someone at home can’t open the shared drive, a contractor starts next week, and a friend says to get a VPN. Secure remote access for a small business is only two jobs: reaching something that lives at the office, or coming from an address an app or client has on its list. If you have neither, buy nothing. Here are the three questions that tell you.

For one server at the office, buy a way in rather than a VPN

Tailscale Standard is $8 a user a month, $480 a year at 5 people, and runs directly on a Synology NAS. Don’t use its free plan, which it says “is only suitable for non-commercial use”. One internal web app needs even less: Cloudflare Access is free up to 50 users. If the only thing at the office is shared files, ask whether they could move: a SharePoint library synced to each PC ends the need for a way in. Prices are in US dollars.

For a client’s allow-list, buy a fixed IP

That’s the one case for a business VPN. GoodAccess Essential comes to $1,008 a year at 5 people and $3,948 at 40, counting one dedicated IP. Its 14-day trial asks for no card, so you can test the address against the allow-list before you pay. There’s what it costs beside NordLayer and GoodAccess Premium.

Ignore café Wi-Fi, and a form that only mentions VPNs

The FTC says that “because of the widespread use of encryption, connecting through a public Wi-Fi network is usually safe”, so that alone isn’t a reason to buy. Tokio Marine HCC’s application asks for MFA on any VPN you have, which isn’t a demand to own one: what the renewal form asks about MFA matters more. Files in the cloud still need a backup that would survive ransomware.