Most other types of private networks exist for the sole purpose of making computer connectivity more readily accessible. While a *virtual* private network can most certainly do that as well (that’s pretty much why site-to-site VPNs exist), the technology itself has been geared toward bolstering one’s privacy and security from its humble beginnings in the ‘90s.
More specifically, a VPN will both handle all of your system traffic by encrypting it, and then anonymize it with a fake IP address – ideally a dedicated one. These two core functionalities complement one another quite perfectly – encryption secures your information while IP spoofing conceals its source, i.e. your identity. As this is happening on a OS level, a VPN lets you conceal your activity from your ISP as easily as it obfuscates it from the IP department at your workplace or a one of those temporarily embarrassed Nigerian princes trying to perform a man-in-the-middle attack on one of your devices.
Nothing else really comes close in terms of sheer feature variety and cost-effectiveness. In that way, a VPN is essentially the only truly “private” network and the last one you’ll ever need.
Similar questions to “How does a virtual private network (VPN) provide additional security over other types of networks?”:
We also covered these answers, so in case you’re searching for them, they can be found under these links:
- Which VPN topology is also known as a hub-and-spoke configuration?
- Which VPN tunneling protocol uses IPSec with 3DES for data confidentiality?
- Which VPN protocol leverages web-based applications?
- What UDP port is used for IKE traffic from a VPN client to server?
- For domain-joined computers, what is the simplest way to configure VPN connections?