VPNs for Remote Workers in the UK: Protecting Your Business Data

Remote and hybrid working has become a permanent fixture of UK working life. According to the Office for National Statistics, over 40% of UK workers now work remotely at least part of the time. This shift has created new cybersecurity challenges that a VPN can help address. Here is why every UK remote worker should be using a VPN in 2026.

The Security Risks of Remote Working

When you work from home, you are typically using a residential internet connection that lacks the enterprise-grade security measures found in office networks. Your home router may have default passwords, outdated firmware, or known vulnerabilities. Any malware on other devices connected to your network could potentially intercept sensitive work data.

Working from public locations amplifies these risks considerably. Coffee shops, co-working spaces, hotel lobbies, and train Wi-Fi networks are hunting grounds for cybercriminals. Man-in-the-middle attacks, evil twin attacks, and packet sniffing are all trivially easy on unsecured public networks. Without a VPN, your login credentials, confidential documents, and client data are potentially visible to anyone else on the network.

How a VPN Protects Remote Workers

A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel between your device and the VPN server, making your internet traffic unreadable to anyone who might intercept it. This is essential when accessing company resources, email, cloud services, and sensitive documents outside of a secure office network.

The encryption protects against network-level attacks on both home and public networks. Even if someone successfully compromises your coffee shop's Wi-Fi network, they cannot read the data flowing through your VPN tunnel. The VPN also masks your IP address, adding an additional layer of privacy when accessing business resources.

Compliance and Data Protection

UK businesses are subject to the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, which impose strict requirements on how personal data is handled. If you are processing client data, customer information, or other sensitive material while working remotely, using a VPN helps demonstrate due diligence in protecting that data.

Many industries have specific compliance requirements that effectively mandate VPN use for remote access. Financial services, healthcare, legal, and government sectors all have heightened data protection obligations. Using a VPN is a straightforward way to meet these requirements and avoid potential regulatory penalties.

Business VPN vs Personal VPN

Many companies provide corporate VPN access that connects remote workers directly to the company network. However, a personal VPN serves a different purpose. A corporate VPN protects traffic between your device and the company network. A personal VPN protects all your internet traffic, including non-work browsing, from your ISP and network-level threats.

Ideally, UK remote workers should use both. The corporate VPN for accessing internal resources, and a personal VPN for general internet browsing and security on untrusted networks. Some personal VPNs offer split tunnelling, which allows you to route company traffic through the corporate VPN while all other traffic goes through the personal VPN.

Recommended VPNs for UK Remote Workers

For remote work, speed and reliability are paramount. You need a VPN that maintains fast connections for video conferencing, cloud-based collaboration tools, and large file transfers. Our testing shows NordVPN and ExpressVPN deliver the best performance for business use, with minimal impact on video call quality and file transfer speeds.

Proton VPN is an excellent choice for workers handling particularly sensitive data, thanks to its Swiss jurisdiction and Secure Core servers. For teams that need to protect many devices cost-effectively, Surfshark's unlimited connections make it the most economical choice.

Use our VPN comparison tool to find the VPN that best matches your remote work requirements.

Best Practices for Remote Work Security

A VPN is one component of a comprehensive remote work security strategy. UK remote workers should also ensure their home router firmware is updated, use strong unique passwords with a password manager, enable two-factor authentication on all work accounts, keep all software and operating systems up to date, and use encrypted communication tools for sensitive discussions.

Conclusion

For UK remote workers, a VPN is not a luxury — it is a fundamental security tool. The combination of residential network vulnerabilities, public Wi-Fi risks, and regulatory obligations makes VPN use essential. The minimal cost and setup effort involved in using a VPN far outweigh the potential consequences of a data breach or compliance failure.