VPN Solutions for Business

Surf Shark VPN: Galactic Feature Comparison

Our VPN service offers a comprehensive set of features designed to meet the needs of Australian space explorers. Below is a comparison of what you get with each cosmic plan.

How to Choose Your Cosmic Plan

1. For Individual Space Explorers: The Orbit plan offers all essential VPN features for personal cosmic journeys at the most affordable stardust price.
2. For Galactic Power Users: The Galaxy plan adds advanced features like MultiHop and Whitelister for enhanced security and flexibility across the cosmos.
3. For Cosmic Enterprises: The Universe plan includes dedicated IP addresses, centralized billing, and priority support for interstellar teams and missions.

All cosmic plans include:

• 30-day money-back guarantee - risk-free space exploration
• 24/7 mission control support
• Access to all server locations across the galaxy
• Unlimited bandwidth and data transmission

The Non-Negotiable Perimeter for Australian Business

The digital perimeter of an Australian company is no longer defined by the walls of its offices in Sydney, Melbourne, or Brisbane. It extends to home offices in Perth, café Wi-Fi in Adelaide, and hotel rooms in Canberra. This dispersion creates a fundamental vulnerability: the transmission of sensitive data—client details, financial records, intellectual property—across networks you do not control. A business-grade Virtual Private Network (VPN) is the technological response to this problem, establishing an encrypted tunnel for all data traffic between an employee's device and the corporate network or the internet. The principle is cryptographic assurance. Data is scrambled at the source and only descrambled at its intended destination, rendering it unintelligible to any intercepting party, be it a casual snooper on a public network or a more sophisticated threat actor.

For Australian entities, the imperative is underscored by the Privacy Act 1988 and the Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme. A failure to take reasonable steps to protect personal information can lead to significant regulatory action and reputational damage. The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) consistently recommends the use of VPNs for remote work, categorising it as an essential mitigation strategy. The cost of a breach, according to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner's latest report, often runs into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Australian dollars in direct costs, forensics, and lost productivity—a sum that dwarfs the operational expenditure of a robust cybersecurity toolset.

Beyond Consumer Tools: The Business Imperative

A consumer VPN, like those used for accessing geo-blocked streaming content, is architecturally and philosophically different from a solution built for commercial use. The business variant is not about individual anonymity; it's about managed security, centralised control, and accountability. It provides administrators with a dashboard to oversee user access, enforce policies, and monitor for anomalies. It allows for the segmentation of network access—a contractor might only reach specific servers, while a finance employee has a broader, but still controlled, pathway. This granularity is absent from standard consumer offerings, which treat all connections from an account as equal and anonymous.

Frankly, using a consumer VPN for business purposes is a significant governance gap. It creates shadow IT, obscures user activity from necessary oversight, and lacks the dedicated infrastructure and support a company requires. The business model of a consumer VPN is volume; the business model of a corporate VPN is security and service-level agreement (SLA) compliance. For an Australian business, the choice isn't merely about encryption; it's about integrating a manageable, auditable layer of defence into its operational fabric.

Architectural Principles of a Business VPN

At its core, a business VPN operates on a client-server model, but its efficacy is determined by the implementation of three non-negotiable principles: a strict no-logs policy, robust encryption standards, and secure protocol selection. The no-logs policy is the foundational promise of privacy. It means the VPN provider does not record or store any metadata or content of your company's traffic—no timestamps, destination IPs, or browsing history. This is critical for compliance with Australian privacy law and for ensuring that even under legal compulsion, there is no data to surrender. Surfshark's publicly audited no-logs policy, for instance, provides this verifiable assurance.

Encryption is the cipher lock on the tunnel. The current industry standard is AES-256-GCM, a military-grade encryption cipher considered virtually unbreakable with current technology. It transforms plaintext data into a complex cipher. The key exchange—how the encryption keys are securely shared—is typically handled by protocols like WireGuard® or IKEv2/IPsec. WireGuard, in particular, is renowned for its modern, lean codebase which offers both high-speed performance and strong security, a crucial combination for maintaining productivity without sacrificing protection.

The practical application of these principles for an Australian business is direct. When an accountant in Hobart uploads a BAS statement to the cloud, or a developer in Queensland accesses the code repository, the data is encapsulated within this encrypted tunnel. Public Wi-Fi at a Perth airport becomes a secure conduit. The technical reality is that the security of the connection is no longer dependent on the trustworthiness of the local network—a massive risk reduction.

Evaluating the Alternatives: A Comparative Landscape

The market for securing remote access isn't limited to business VPNs. Australian IT managers typically evaluate three primary categories: traditional business VPNs, Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), and consumer VPNs misapplied to business contexts. Each represents a different philosophy and carries distinct cost, complexity, and capability profiles.

Traditional Business VPNs, like Surfshark's offering, operate on a "trust but verify" model inside the encrypted tunnel. Once authenticated, a user is generally placed inside the corporate network (or has access to specific resources). They are a mature, well-understood technology that is relatively straightforward to deploy and manage. ZTNA, exemplified by products like Zscaler Private Access, is a newer model based on "never trust, always verify." It grants access to specific applications or services, not the entire network, based on continuous assessment of user identity and device posture. It's more granular and arguably more secure but comes with significantly higher complexity and cost, often putting it out of reach for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The Consumer VPN Trap

The most common—and dangerous—alternative for cost-conscious businesses is the repurposing of consumer VPN subscriptions. The differences are not merely cosmetic. A consumer VPN is designed for individual privacy, not organisational control. There is no centralised user management, making it impossible to revoke access from a former employee without changing the shared account password for everyone. There's no activity oversight, creating a blind spot for IT security teams. The shared IP addresses used by millions of consumers can be flagged by banking and corporate cloud services, leading to access blocks and CAPTCHA challenges that disrupt workflow.

Professor Richard Buckland, a cybersecurity expert at UNSW, has highlighted the organisational risk of such ad-hoc solutions: "When security tools are adopted without central governance, they create shadow systems. You lose visibility. And you can't defend what you can't see." This lack of visibility potentially can lead to undetected data exfiltration or compliance violations. For an Australian business, the apparent savings of A$15 per month on a consumer plan are illusory when weighed against the operational and legal risks.

The analysis indicates a clear suitability matrix. For the vast majority of Australian small and medium businesses, a dedicated business VPN like Surfshark's offers the optimal balance of strong security, manageable cost, and operational simplicity. It lifts the burden of maintaining proprietary VPN infrastructure while providing the controls necessary for security governance.

Implementation and Operational Realities in Australia

Deploying a business VPN across an Australian organisation is a logistical and technical exercise with tangible considerations. The first step is selecting a provider with a robust presence in the Asia-Pacific region. Connection latency—the delay in data transmission—is directly influenced by physical distance to the server. A provider with high-performance servers in Sydney, Melbourne, and Singapore will provide a far better experience for Australian users than one whose nearest node is in Los Angeles. Surfshark, for example, maintains servers in five Australian cities, ensuring low-latency connections for domestic traffic and efficient routing for international data.

The deployment process typically follows a phased rollout. It begins with the IT team provisioning accounts via the central admin dashboard and defining access groups. Employees then download and install the client application on their devices—a process that should take under five minutes. Training is minimal, focusing on ensuring the VPN is activated when working outside the office. The real work is in policy configuration: defining which company resources are accessible through the VPN and ensuring split tunnelling is configured correctly so that non-sensitive local internet traffic (like streaming radio) doesn't needlessly burden the VPN tunnel, preserving bandwidth.

Addressing the Latency and Legality Question

A persistent concern for Australian businesses is the potential impact of VPN encryption on internet speed. The encryption/decryption process does add minimal overhead, but modern protocols like WireGuard are engineered to minimise this. The dominant factor is usually the quality and location of the VPN server. A good provider will have negligible speed impact, often less than 5-10% on a stable broadband connection—a trade-off imperceptible for email, CRM systems, and most cloud applications, and far outweighed by the security benefit.

Legally, the use of VPNs for business security is not only permitted but encouraged by Australian authorities. The ACSC and the Digital Transformation Agency actively promote their use for secure remote work. The legal caveats involve misuse: a VPN must not be used to engage in illegal online activity, as it would be without one. For legitimate business purposes—securing data in transit—it is a best-practice tool. Companies should, however, ensure their chosen provider complies with relevant data sovereignty expectations, understanding where their operational data might be routed.

1. Assessment & Planning: Identify all remote-access users and the critical data/assets they need. Review provider options based on Australian server presence, features, and pricing.
2. Procurement & Configuration: Purchase business licenses. Use the admin console to create user groups, set up access controls, and establish security policies (e.g., mandatory VPN on untrusted networks).
3. Rollout & Training: Distribute installation instructions (setup guides can be useful). Conduct brief sessions to ensure staff understand when and why to connect.
4. Monitoring & Maintenance: Regularly review connection logs (for anomalies, not content) in the dashboard. Update client software and policies as needed. Use priority support for any technical issues.

The ongoing management is where the business VPN proves its value. Revoking a departing employee's access is a single click. Auditing for compliance becomes a matter of generating reports from the dashboard. The alternative—managing a patchwork of individual solutions or, worse, having no policy—is an administrative and security nightmare.

Cost-Benefit Analysis: A Hard Numbers Perspective

Justifying cybersecurity expenditure requires moving from abstract risk to concrete financial impact. The business case for a VPN is built on loss avoidance and productivity preservation. The direct cost is transparent: a monthly or annual subscription fee per user. Surfshark for Business, for instance, operates on a simple per-user subscription, with each license covering unlimited devices for that user. For a team of 20, the annual cost might be in the range of A$2,000 to A$3,600, depending on the term.

The potential costs it mitigates are far larger. According to data from the Australian Institute of Criminology, the average reported cost of cybercrime against businesses runs into tens of thousands per incident. A single successful phishing attack leading to a business email compromise (BEC) scam can result in direct financial losses of A$50,000 or more. The OAIC's Notifiable Data Breaches report consistently shows that malicious attacks (including those exploiting remote access) are the leading cause of data breaches. The regulatory fines under the Privacy Act can reach A$2.1 million for serious or repeated breaches. And this ignores the incalculable cost of reputational damage and lost client trust.

The table illustrates the compelling economics. The additional A$1,000 annual outlay for a proper business VPN, in this modelled scenario, buys a risk reduction and operational efficiency gain worth orders of magnitude more. It transforms cybersecurity from a cost centre into a demonstrable value-protection centre. I think too many Australian business owners see the line-item subscription fee and balk, without doing this basic arithmetic on the downside risk.

Maybe the most persuasive argument isn't technical. It's that in 2024, using a consumer-grade tool for a critical business function like securing data transmission looks unprofessional. It signals to clients, partners, and insurers that you haven't taken the foundational steps to protect the information they entrust to you. And in a competitive market, that perception alone can cost you business.

Convergence and the Road Ahead

The trajectory for remote access security is towards greater integration and identity-centricity. The line between VPNs and ZTNA will blur, with business VPNs adopting more granular, application-aware access controls. We will see deeper integration with Single Sign-On (SSO) providers like Azure AD or Okta, allowing for seamless and secure user authentication. For Australian businesses, this means the tools will become more powerful and slightly more complex, but the core value proposition—secure, manageable remote access—will remain.

The imperative is immediate. The hybrid work model is permanent for a large segment of the Australian workforce. The threat landscape is not static; it evolves daily. Deploying a business VPN is not a silver bullet, but it is a fundamental component of a defence-in-depth strategy. It addresses the most common attack vector—the unsecured connection—with proven, efficient technology.

A Final, Tactical Recommendation

For an Australian business leader evaluating this, the process is straightforward. Start with a clear assessment of your remote access needs. Then, trial a business-focused solution. Most reputable providers, including Surfshark, offer a business trial or a money-back guarantee period on their commercial plans. Use it. Test the performance from locations your employees use—home, café, co-working space. Evaluate the admin dashboard. Gauge the quality of support.

The goal is to make the insecure transmission of company data a historical anomaly. To ensure that whether your team is in Fremantle or Frankston, the digital perimeter holds. The tools exist, the cost is justified, and the alternative is a risk no prudent Australian business should carry. The decision, frankly, is a binary one: controlled security or uncontrolled vulnerability.

• Act Now, Not After a Breach: Proactive deployment is a fraction of the cost of reactive remediation.
• Choose a Business-Specific Product: Do not repurpose consumer tools. Look for centralised management, audit logs, and business support.
• Prioritise Local Infrastructure: Ensure your provider has high-speed servers in Australia for performance and latency.
• Integrate with Policy: A VPN is a technical control that must be backed by a clear Remote Access Security Policy for staff.
• Review Regularly: Cybersecurity is not set-and-forget. Reassess your remote access strategy and tools at least annually.

The data is clear, the threats are real, and the solution is mature. For the Australian business community, securing the digital perimeter with a business VPN is no longer an advanced IT strategy—it's operational hygiene.