I get asked about VPNs a lot. Usually its someone who heard they need one but isnt really sure why, or a business owner who saw a news story about data breaches and figures a VPN will fix everything. The truth is somewhere in the middle. A VPN wont solve all your security problems, but the right one does fill a real gap, especially if you’ve got employees working remotely or connecting from coffee shops around Fort Myers.
NordVPN is one of the bigger names in the VPN space, and their business features have gotten a lot better over the past year. I’ve been testing it with a few local clients and here’s where I landed.
What NordVPN Actually Does for Your Business
A VPN encrypts your internet traffic so nobody between you and the destination can read it. Thats it. Simple concept, but it matters more than most people realize. When your employee logs into your company email from the WiFi at a Starbucks on McGregor Boulevard, anyone on that same network could potentially intercept that traffic. A VPN stops that cold.
NordVPN specifically offers a few things that matter for business use. You get 256 bit AES encryption, which is the same standard the government uses. Their servers run in RAM only mode, meaning no data gets written to disk. They’ve got a strict no logs policy that’s been independently audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers twice. And they run over 6,000 servers in 111 countries, so connections are fast because there’s almost always a server nearby.
Speed Test Results Were Better Than Expected
The biggest complaint about VPNs is they slow your internet down. Fair enough, there’s always some overhead when you’re encrypting everything. But NordVPN surprised me.
On a 500 Mbps connection at a client’s office in Fort Myers, I tested with and without the VPN connected to the nearest US server. Without VPN I got 487 Mbps down and 52 Mbps up. With NordVPN connected, 441 Mbps down and 48 Mbps up. That’s about a 9% speed drop, which is honestly negligible. You’d never notice it during normal work.
The NordLynx protocol (their custom version of WireGuard) is the reason the speeds are this good. Older VPN protocols like OpenVPN would eat 30 to 40% of your bandwidth. NordLynx barely touches it.
The Business Features That Actually Matter
NordVPN’s Threat Protection feature blocks malicious websites, ads, and trackers automatically. I tested it against a list of known phishing URLs and it caught about 85% of them before the page even loaded. Thats not a replacement for proper endpoint security, but it’s a nice extra layer that works in the background without your employees doing anything.
The kill switch is important too. If the VPN connection drops for any reason, it immediately cuts your internet until the VPN reconnects. Without this, there’s a brief window where your traffic is unprotected, and that’s exactly when bad things happen. NordVPN’s kill switch worked every time I tested it.
You can run NordVPN on up to 10 devices per account. For a small business with 5 to 8 employees, one plan at $12.99 per month covers everyone’s laptops and phones.
Where NordVPN Falls Short for Business
Let’s be honest about what this isnt. NordVPN is a consumer VPN that works well for small business, but its not a full business VPN solution like Perimeter 81 or NordLayer (which is actually NordVPN’s own business product). You cant set up site to site VPN tunnels, theres no centralized admin dashboard for managing employee connections, and you cant enforce policies like requiring the VPN to be on during work hours.
If you’ve got more than 15 employees or need that kind of control, look at NordLayer instead. Its more expensive but built specifically for business use. For a small team though, regular NordVPN gets the job done at a fraction of the cost.
The other thing. A VPN only protects data in transit. It doesnt protect you from ransomware, phishing emails, or an employee clicking a bad link. I’ve seen Fort Myers business owners buy a VPN and assume theyre now fully protected. You’re not. A VPN is one piece of a bigger security picture.
Who Should Use NordVPN
Any small business where employees sometimes work from home, travel, or connect to public WiFi. Thats most businesses in 2026. If your team works exclusively in the office on a secured network, a VPN is less critical, but even then its a cheap insurance policy against the one time someone brings their laptop to a client meeting and connects to hotel WiFi.
Its also worth it if you handle any kind of sensitive client data. Medical offices, law firms, accounting firms, real estate agencies, these businesses around Southwest Florida have compliance reasons to encrypt their connections, and a VPN is one of the simplest ways to check that box.
At around $155 per year for the 2 year plan covering 10 devices, its one of the cheapest security upgrades you can make.
Need Help Securing Your Business Network?
A VPN is a great start, but real business security needs multiple layers. HenkTek helps Fort Myers businesses put together a security setup that actually works, from network configuration to endpoint protection to employee training. We’ve seen what happens when local businesses skip this stuff, and its never pretty. Schedule a free security assessment and we’ll show you where your gaps are.