An image from the GoldenFrog website promotes securing your online activity
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — The security landscape online is changing, and with it the general awareness of security among users. Where there was once a vague awareness of online threats, there is now a real and acute sense of the malware and data theft threats to which online communications is subject.
VPN service provider Golden Frog (www.goldenfrog.com) believes its VyprVPN product addresses a newer, and growing, need for information security on a personal scale, and – in an assertion that should be familiar to businesses in the hosting space – feels web hosting providers have an opportunity to profit from providing this kind of security to consumers and small businesses.
Golden Frog’s effort in the VPN space is a shift away from the corporate VPN, providing the same kind of security around data transfer on an individual-user basis, as well as the means to disguise the source of a user’s activity or even just to choose the location from which they appear to be connecting, and a broad range of connecting technologies.
VyprVPN, says Golden Frog CTO Phil Molter, provides VPN on a personal level – an individual account, with a sign-up that works across a variety of devices (computer, tablet, mobile). It’s a monthly-subscription service, without a contract, that lets the user choose the location they want to use as their proxy.
Molter says the company views its entry into the VPN space (less than a year old) as an optimization of the existing technology, using its network presence to improve on the speed. Importantly, the company worked to make its technology fit pretty seamlessly into the typical Internet experience, to feel like a regular connection to the Internet.
One of the developments that led to what Golden Frog sees as the opportunity around a personal VPN is the debate around net neutrality, and the revelations about some of the deep packet inspection going on within ISPs. The company thinks users, equipped with the knowledge that unencrypted transmissions are potentially going to be looked at, will be looking for ways to encrypt those communications.
“Just with the partners we’ve already worked with and deployed, we’ve managed to see VPN traffic grow from nothing, when we started, to several thousand people using it at any given time,” says Molter. “Some of this is paid, some is partners, some is people trying out the services. But we’re seeing good retention rates on it, and when customers do tell us why they’re using it, it’s primarily because in the world we live in today, people used to go through just one ISP to get on the internet. You’d go home, and you’d get on the internet. Maybe you had internet at your office. Now people are using random wi-fi hotspots, mobile hotspots. People don’t know where their ISP is nowadays. And the more people learn about how these ISPs operate, the more concerned they become that they’re not getting a consistently honest Internet service.”
For hosting providers, the question is, will the personal VPN service fit into the package of services they’ve assembled around the needs of their customer base. Molter thinks it will.
The company is developing a partner program with a revenue-share model around the monthly subscriptions for the VPN service. Hosting providers and ISPs, he says, are among the organizations Golden Frog expects to be most able to benefit from the program. The company has already seen some early interest and adoption among service providers and organizations, including a South American ISP, an antivirus company and even a smallish international school with students in China.
“We will be launching a channel partner program, in which people can resell it or add it as a value-add to their current offering,” says Molter. “They can even white-label it, potentially. The attraction to other businesses is obviously as a value-add to their existing base, generating more revenue is always a good thing. And particularly if their customer base is feeling insecure, they have an option for them.”
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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