5 Frequently Asked Questions About Military-Grade VPN Encryption

If it's good for the military, it's good for everyone. And yes, a good VPN service provides such level of security to the average user...

Military-Grade VPN Encryption

One of the key features of a VPN service is to keep you protected online. It does that by routing internet traffic through secure servers before delivering the data back to your computer, smartphone or any other device.

That security, however, isn’t always the same; there are services out there that don’t use the best protocols and/or which don’t use the top 256-bit cipher.

Sounds complicated? Don’t worry – that’s what this article is all about; to demystify the military-grade VPN encryption, so you could know what you’re buying into. And, as a result, feel more confident online.

Here are 5 of the most commonly asked questions about military-grade VPN encryption:

1. What is military-grade encryption?

When people talk about military-grade encryption they refer to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), which is used by governments, intelligence agencies, and cybersecurity experts around the world to encrypt sensitive information.

For maximum security, AES is combined with 256-bit keys, which is virtually impossible to crack. This is true even if someone were to use supercomputers — it would take billions of years to brute-force AES.

AES is available in many different encryption packages and is the first (and only) publicly accessible cipher approved by the National Security Agency (NSA) for top secret information when used in an NSA approved cryptographic module.

Top VPNs provide AES with 256-bit encryption.

2. How military-grade VPN encryption works?

When you establish a connection from a VPN app, your requests are encrypted before being sent to the remote server. Here, those requests are decrypted and forwarded to the intended destination such as a website, video streaming service and so on.

The requested data like a web page or video is then encrypted once again and sent back to your device from the server. Once received, the client decrypts the data so you can see it.

As far as the outside world is concerned, presuming they are watching your connection, you are sending and receiving some gibberish code. This, in‌ ‌turn, prevents your ISP, cybercriminals and intelligence agencies from being able to spy on what you’re doing online.

Additionally, best VPNs don’t keep any logs of users’ activities, making it impossible for anyone to find out “what you did last summer.”

3. What about VPN protocols?

You may have heard of different VPN protocols, and in this section, we’ll try to demystify their role in this process. We won’t be explaining how each of these work, we may prepare a separate article on the subject, but will rather highlight their key features.

The main thing you should know is that a VPN protocol refers to the processes used for creating a secure and fast connection between two devices. When you’re using a VPN, it refers to the device you use the client on and the remote server you connect to.

Most VPN providers include support for multiple protocols, such as:

  • PPTP – fast but not the most secure protocol
  • SSTP – opposite of PPTP, secure but not so fast
  • L2TP – fast, uses Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) for strong encryption
  • IKEv2 – another IPSec-based protocol that is deemed ideal for mobile devices
  • OpenVPN – very secure and arguably the best open-source VPN protocol
  • Catapult Hydra – a proprietary protocol developed by AnchorFree and used to power Hotspot Shield

Most users will go for a default option, which in many cases is OpenVPN (except in the case of Hotspot Shield).

4. Why you need military-grade VPN encryption?

The simple answer is – because it comes included with every solid VPN service. In fact, all services on our Top 5 VPNs list feature the military-grade encryption by default. There is no good reason to leave any of your data on the table to big corporations, various government agencies and even your ISP. If you’re not using a VPN, all those parties are able to sneak into your web traffic to understand what you’re up to on the internet.

We think that privacy is your right, and that — given a choice — you should be the one in control. And that’s what a good VPN is all about.

5. Which VPN with military-grade encryption should I get?

As we have briefly mentioned above, we suggest you start by checking out our list of Top 5 VPNs. It has all the field-tested services that have been proven to work for years. All of them use AES-256 encryption which is is widely regarded as near-unbreakable. Also, all services on the list include a zero-logs policy making it impossible for anyone to track you down on the internet.

On the other hand, you will also be able to use any of these VPNs for other things, such as accessing popular video streaming services like Netflix, download files via BitTorrent, and generally be more anonymous online. As we’ve stated before, privacy is your right and there’s no good reason to give it away that easily.