VPN ban in India - Does it impact you?

Highlights

• There is an appeal by the Home affairs committee that VPN Services should be banned in India

• This will be a “technology challenge” to the security of the nation by the VPN Services being threat to our Cyber Security

• The services are used by the cybercriminals to bypass cyber security walls and mask their activities by remaining anonymous

• Since these services are readily available in the market which has led to the increase in the illegal usage of such services

About the VPN BAN Proposal

The resolution states that VPNs allow criminals to remain anonymous online and therefore India should develop a coordinating mechanism to permanently block VPNs. The committee has requested the ministry to strengthen the tracking and surveillance mechanisms which would be helpful for the TSPs to keep a check on the use of VPN and the dark web.

Who is it likely to affect?

Such VPN services, like NordVPN, ExpressVPN and IPVanish, which give users anonymity on the internet and allow them to access sites that are banned.

VPNs are virtual private networks used by most companies in India to secure their data stored digitally. During the lockdown, VPNs became more useful in simplifying seamless work-from-home situations.

Will the ban on VPN hurt remote work?

The ban is primarily not really for VPN tunnels of large companies and business entities but is rather targeting VPN companies which help Indian citizens in bypassing the current internet bans implemented in India to conduct any cybercrime activity. We think that the government would allow companies to use VPN that will comply with the ‘Indian data laws’.

Possible Solution

Many stakeholders have commented that the government should focus on banning third party ‘No-Log’ VPN apps and softwares from app stores and other websites. The No-Log VPN makes it impossible to track the identity and IP addresses of the hacker whenever a cybercrime happens as it does not save any data of the user in the backend. The ministry can take help from the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to identify such cases and report them.