The global market for Virtual Private Network (VPN) is expected to witness unprecedented spurt in growth in the year 2020 to the tune of 27.1%. By the year 2027, the market is projected to reach US$107.5 billion trailing a CAGR of 17.2% over the analysis period 2020 through 2027. The COVID-19 pandemic confined people to homes, closed down offices, halted transport, and virtually brought social and economic life to a grinding halt. To cope with the abrupt cessation of all operational activities, the world shifted gears to a remote working mode almost overnight. Millions of employees were migrated to work from home (WFM) models initially as a result of shelter-in-place orders. Although countries are emerging from lockdowns, second of wave infections & voluntary social distancing measures are resulting in companies extending WFM options for their employees. Over the last eight months, 88% of IT companies worldwide migrated their employees to work-from-home (WFH) during the pandemic. 92% of teams in Asia-Pacific have implemented WFH since the outbreak highlighting the need to flatten the curve in countries with less than adequate healthcare resources. 45% of employees cite COVID-19 as the trigger for rapid adoption of remote working strategies. 72% of companies plan to shift a portion of their staff permanently to a WFH model. Over 70% of companies plan to permanently offload over 35% of their workforce to WFM roles to reduce worker density at offices.

In the United States, in the pre-pandemic period only 5% to 7% of the country's workforce was working from home (WFH) although over 58% held jobs compatible with remote work. However, over 35% to 40% will work from home multiple-days-a-week by the end of 2021. The pandemic is creating a global 'Work-At-Home' culture which will very likely last beyond the crisis. Against this backdrop, every company needs a well-thought-out work-at-home and business continuity plan. Digital transformation is now visible in all industrial sectors. Telehealth will replace doctor visits by 2025; by 2021 new home constructions will include co-working spaces highlighting the permanence of remote working; supply chain 4.0 will reach 100% adoption by 2025; eCommerce will account for 60% of retail spending by 2020 and block chain & tokenization will be integrated into financial services by 2023.Digital technologies provide productivity, security, efficiency, agility, workforce re-skilling, and customer experience advantages, all of which are vital during times of crisis like the current pandemic. The pandemic is helping test the effectiveness of digital solutions and in the post pandemic world digital innovation will accelerate even further. A key technology playing a crucial role in enabling remote operations is VPN and the technology has witnessed massive increase in adoption in the 1st quarter 2020. In other words, the astounding spike in the number of remote and mobile workers over the last couple of months has brought VPN infrastructures into the spotlight.

Virtual private networks (VPNs) securely connect remote workers to an organization's internal network. VPNs have been experiencing over 150% growth in the 1Q 2020 & the trend is expected to continue in the coming months, albeit at a more stable rate. VPN usage has spiked in parallel to the increase in COVID-19 infections. In Italy, USA, Spain, Germany, Iran and France, VPN usage in March 2020 increased by 175.2%, 132.5%, 62.1%, 48.4%, 51.9%, 47.4% respectively. Companies are upgrading VPN capacity by transitioning towards a software-based service. A software-based perimeter can be employed to monitor the security and quality of wireless connections and for monitoring activity of users. In the event a user has a poor connection or accesses a suspicious website, the VPN software comes into play. The users of the VPN can have an indefinite number of conditions and implement actions on the basis of such conditions. Customers can create rules related to access, and the software implements such rules by restricting certain kinds of activities or connections, such as visiting gambling sites at work. Risk tolerance varies from company to company, with hospitals and banks being highly stringent. Split tunnel or full tunnel is another VPN management strategy. A split tunnel can aid in saving bandwidth and safeguard the sensitive information of a company. However, this method makes corporate networks more vulnerable to security risks. But when a full tunnel VPN is used, the entire traffic is scrutinized. And to this traffic, various security tools such as anti-malware and anti-virus software are applied. The full tunnel method also offers improved visibility as to the actions of the user. But one of the main drawbacks of full tunnel is that it results in significant cost to the user's gateway, and can affect connectivity for the customers. A cloud-based VPN in comparison facilitates easier scaling-up, especially for newer organizations which do not maintain physical hardware on the premise. Gateways that are intended for a specific number of users will not be capable of supporting full tunnel traffic. Split tunnel has lower monitoring options, with managers only being able to witness the period for which an employee remains connected to the VPN. But with full tunnel, companies can view when an employee is connected to the VPN and also what the person is accessing.