Twingate Review 2021: Is It Safer for Businesses Than A VPN?

Twingate is a newcomer to the market, offering some features that are a vast improvement over the standard VPN but is it really that much better? Let’s see where it delivers for large-scale and enterprise businesses, and if it’s worth the changeover for smaller companies and entrepreneurs.

Twingate Vs. VPN – What’s Different? What’s the Same?

Since Twingate bills itself as the ‘anti-VPN’, it’s important to know how it differs from using a traditional VPN for private network access and overall security.

How Twingate Differs

Twingate isn’t really a VPN service, that’s the first and biggest difference. In simple terms, Twingate gives users the ability to access permissions at application level, while VPNs require network level access.  Its use of zero-trust access is similar to what perfect forward secrecy offers, only on a larger scale. Instead of protecting individual sessions, it prevents hackers from accessing the entire network if a single user is compromised. So, in a way, it’s like perfect forward secrecy amplified by a 100.

As previously mentioned, a VPN gives you access to resources at a network level, which can leave room for a potential security breach. If a hacker manages to access your network, any data on the network is potentially up for grabs if the VPN doesn’t use perfect forward secrecy. With perfect forward secrecy, the system continuously changes the keys it uses to encrypt and decrypt data. That way if one session on the network is compromised, no additional sessions are up for grabs.

Twingate bypasses the need for perfect forward secrecy by providing access at the application-level. This type of access decreases the likelihood of the system being breached by hackers as no network resources are required. A vast improvement over some VPN gateways, that actually leak DNS/IP requests. With no network or port-level access and no need to actively connect to a server, Twingate can easily hide online.  An important feature as the use of anti-VPN technology has made VPNs increasingly visible to hackers.

I had a hard time finding any real deal-breakers when it comes to Twingate. One small hiccup is that it doesn’t allow any port-level access. Port-level access could be useful when it comes to providing visitors temporary access without compromising the network or having to add and remove emails and go through the standard identification process. On the other hand, the authentication/identification process isn’t difficult or time-consuming.

Both can be used for business purposes, but Twingate offers enterprise solutions that are easy to customize, and control, from the centralized admin console and new client agents can be set up without IT support. However, one license with Twingate equals one user, which may get spendy for a smaller 10 user business. While most major VPNs allow at least 5 simultaneous connections per license.

How Twingate Is Similar

Just because it isn’t a VPN, it doesn’t mean you’ll miss out on classic VPN benefits like reduced latency, amplified security, and split-tunneling. Your data is encrypted with industry standard encryption protocols like TLS/SSL and AES-256. Twingate offers businesses of all sizes a software-only, cloud-based service with the above features, and more.

Like Twingate, the most popular VPNs provide apps for Android and iOS, as well as clients for Linux, Windows, and macOS. That way employees can enjoy secure access via phone, desktop, laptop, and virtually any other compatible device.

Both VPNs and Twingate also provide better online connectivity, offer users a better and safer online experience, and help protect client and user data and other sensitive information from hackers and third-parties.