What Is A VPN Tunnel and How It Secures Your Data?

To keep privacy and secure your online activities is more important these days than ever before. There are multiple tools available now to avoid tracking of online activities, but Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are the best among all. As a reliable and secure solution, the majority of online users prefer using VPN all over the world to protect their personal information.

A VPN creates a secure tunnel for data transfer between your device and the internet. This ensures secure connectivity and acts like a shield to save your personal and sensitive information from hackers and third-party interventions.

According to statistics, the most important reasons for using a VPN in the United States is general privacy and security.

What is A VPN Tunnel?

A VPN tunnel is a secure and encrypted connection established between your device and any VPN server. This tunnel is a private pathway that creates an environment in which your data can travel in encrypted form without interception.

Highly secure encryption algorithms transform your data into an unreadable code under some protocols avoiding any kind of data leak. This unreadable code travelling within the shield of VPN tunnel ensures secure data transmission, avoiding any online interception threats, even across public networks.

How Do VPN Tunnels Work?

When VPN establishes a connection, immediately it creates a secure pathway for data travelling. This pathway for data transmission is like a highly protected tunnel for data travelling from a user’s device to a VPN server existing anywhere in the world.

VPN tunneling hides the IP address and encrypt data, ensuring your online activities are secure, especially on an unsecured public Wi-Fi network. This is exactly like sending a confidential letter in coded language in a sealed envelope through the courier. Even the envelope is visible to courier workers, and they can handle the envelope, but they can’t access the private contents inside unless someone breaks the seal.

Also, if someone can break the seal, he cannot understand the content in coded language. The added security of encryption guarantees that your information is not accessible to anyone trying to step in your online connection. VPN also actively performs tunnel monitoring to check any kind of abnormal activities.

The tunneling process has several steps that ensure the security and privacy of your data travelling through the VPN tunnel. Following are the important steps involved:

Connection Initiation

As a user first we need to select a VPN service of our choice and initiate this service on our device by providing credentials.

Authentication

On putting credentials, the authentication process starts. The VPN server checks the credentials and verifies user’s identity.

Encryption Keys Exchange

Once user is marked as verified then the user’s device and the VPN server mutually agree upon the encryption method using encryption keys. This process is called key exchange.

Establishing the Tunnel

Once the encryption method is finalized, it triggers the creation of a secure tunnel. The basic intent of this tunnel creation is to protect data from any unofficial access while data is travelling across the internet.

Creating Data Packets

Once the tunnel is open, your data is cut into smaller pieces. Each piece gets a new label with a secret code and the address of its destination.

Data Encryption

Now it encrypts all the data into data packets using the agreed encryption keys.

Data Transmission

After data encryption, the tunneling process sends encrypted packets over the internet to the VPN server.

Decryption at the VPN Server

Upon reaching data packets to the VPN server, it receives the encrypted packets and decrypts all using the header information and shared encryption keys.

Data Forwarding

Now the VPN server forwards the decrypted data to the intended destination on the internet.

Data Return

In next step, the VPN server receives the requested data from the destination.

Re-Encryption

Proceeding further, the VPN server re-encrypts the data received from the destination using the same encryption keys.

Return Transmission

Now the VPN server sends back the re-encrypted data to the user’s device using the same VPN tunnel, ensuring privacy and security in both directions.

Decryption at User’s Device

Finally, the user’s device receives the requested data and decrypts this data using the shared encryption keys to display the result to user.

VPN Tunneling Protocols

The designing and coding of different VPNs is not similar. It’s essential to consider the differences between them when making a selection. Various types of VPNs come with different tunneling protocols, which have different levels of security and performance.

When you are selecting a VPN for personal use, it is important to go deeper to check which VPN tunneling protocols are involved in a specific VPN. Also, it is important to know the strengths and weaknesses of every VPN under consideration for better comparison, which helps you make an informed decision.

Let’s discuss some of the most popular VPN tunneling protocols to have a better understanding and to help you choose the right one for your needs.

Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP)

Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) is a simple VPN protocol. Developed by Microsoft, PPTP creates a secure and encrypted tunnel, but it has vulnerable authentication if not using a strong or long password. It has a relatively weak encryption algorithm, which intruders can intercept easily. The convincing factor for choosing this protocol is its easy to configure functionality as it only needs a username, password and server address.

OpenVPN

OpenVPN is a widely supported and a highly secure choice for professional users. It offers a good balance of speed and security. It is an open-source VPN protocol that uses AES 256-bit encryption to protect data. It has capability to work with multiple operating systems like Windows, macOS, Linux, Android & iOS. Its setup is comparatively complex and may have some compatibility issues as well. Its high standard security features and flexibility making it a popular choice in the market.

WireGuard

WireGuard is another better choice for those looking for a fast, secure, and easy-to-use VPN protocol. It is relatively a new protocol, and its design is based on modern techniques. It stands out from older VPN protocols because of its superior features. Its strong security, compatibility, efficient performance and significantly simplified codebase make it an interesting choice for online privacy.

Internet Protocol Security (IPSec)

Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) provides a unique and reliable way to protect sensitive data and ensure secure communication. It is a suite of protocols designed to ensure secure communications over Virtual Private Networks. It provides strong authentication, reliable encryption, and data integrity, ensuring that data is transmitted securely over the internet.

Internet Key Exchange Version 2 (IKEv2)

Internet Key Exchange Version 2 comes with improved, quicker and more reliable connectivity solution. Its specialty that makes it superior over other protocols is maintaining VPN connections while switching networks. It provides improved speed due to its efficient use of network resources. IKEv2 shows quick reconnection capabilities due to which it is considered first choice for mobile devices. Not having any platform limitations and less chance of vulnerabilities out ranks it over other solutions. Protecting data integrity and confidentiality over potentially insecure networks is another big advantage it provides to its users.

Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP)

Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol is a VPN protocol that encrypts network traffic and enables secure communication over networks. Data with SSL/TLS encryption is passed through firewalls due to this protocol. No doubt, it provides reliable security, but it is limited to Windows environments which limits its deployments. SSTP is famous for its strong encryption capabilities. Its market share is less these days due to its platform specific nature.

Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP)

Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol is unique for creating the VPN tunnel. Its implementation is huge due to its compatibility and compatibility with a wide range of devices and operating systems. It uses fixed ports and that is one big drawback for implementation in complex environments. It has the dual layers of security that may potentially slow down its working speed.

Kill Switch Functionality

Kill switch functionality is a security feature that is used in VPNs. It is the function that automatically disconnects user’s internet connection from the VPN tunnel if the VPN connection drops for any reason. This feature helps securing user’s IP address when your VPN connection is interrupted on any stage. It helps prevent accidental data leaks that could occur if your device were to revert to an unsecured connection.

If during your browsing session, VPN connection drops and kill switch functionality is not present, your session is not disconnected, and it keeps on working with regular internet connection. This potentially exposes your online activities to your ISP or other suspicious online players. If user is performing any online activity at that point where sensitive data is involved (e.g. banking transaction) then confidential information may be on high risk.

When you are using a VPN with kill switch functionality implemented, in this case if the VPN connection drops unexpectedly, the kill switch is trigged. It immediately disconnects your device from the internet and secures your data from being exposed over unsecured regular internet connection.

Using a VPN with a kill switch make you more confident during your online browsing sessions as you know your online privacy and security is intact. Then even if you are using public Wi-Fi networks, working on highly sensitive data or accessing Geo-restricted content, you are sure that your online activities and data is under protection.

Enabling Kill Switch on Your VPN

The exact procedure to enable a kill switch on a VPN can vary. It depends on the specific VPN service you are using for your online connectivity. However, usually this feature is available as an option in VPN settings.