[Transcript] Episode 425: Another Relevant VPN Discussion

 

Evan Dumas 

You’re listening to Group Practice Tech, a podcast by Person Centered Tech, where we help mental health group practice owners ethically and effectively leverage tech to improve their practices. I’m your co host, Evan Dumas.

 

Liath Dalton 

And I’m Liath Dalton and we are Person Centered Tech.

 

Liath Dalton 

This episode is brought to you by Therapy Notes. Therapy Notes is a robust online practice management and Electronic Health Record system to support you in growing your thriving practice. Therapy Notes is a complete practice management system, with all the functionality you need to manage client records, meet with clients remotely, create rich documentation, schedule appointments, and bill insurance all right at your fingertips. To get two free months of Therapy Notes as a new Therapy Notes user, go to therapynotes.com and use promo code PCT.

 

Evan Dumas 

Hello, and welcome to Episode 425: Another Relevant VPN Discussion.

 

Liath Dalton 

Yes, indeed. So you listeners of Group Practice Tech will know that we have talked about VPNs multiple times, because they do have a lot of important utility that can can come up in the practice context. And specifically, Evan, can you give us the little in a nutshell,

 

Evan Dumas 

Oh, yeah. VPNs,

 

Liath Dalton 

version of what that is.

 

Evan Dumas 

Oh, for sure. Yeah. VPNs are lovely little backup utilities that you use whenever you’re going to be using untrusted Wi-Fi. So when you’re outside of a home office that has been secured, or you’re outside of a physical office that’s been secured, you can’t really trust the Wi-Fi, because you didn’t set it up yourself. And so that’s why you use something like a hotspot on your phone, or more commonly a VPN. It is like a protected layer for your internet. And so that’s, that’s where we recommend folks use it.

 

Liath Dalton 

Exactly.

 

Liath Dalton 

And basically, it provides a encrypted tunnel to whatever otherwise untrustworthy or dirty Wi-Fi network you want, need to connect to, and keeps the potential for your device being compromised, by connecting to that otherwise dirty network, from being a factor.

 

Liath Dalton 

So it’s great,  it’s not something that is essential in every practice’s tech stack, because like Evan said, you can use a phone hotspot to get the same effect of having a secured network connection that you can connect your laptop or a primary computing device to. But for some folks, you know, if you don’t have an unlimited data plan, or you’re in an area where you just don’t have good connectivity, but there is a strong Wi-Fi network, then that’s where this kind of comes up as a more common need.

 

Liath Dalton 

So we’ve gotten lots of questions recently, both about what is the best VPN to use, and then the best VPN that we recommend, and that Tom’s Guide, who’s kind of our go to in terms of software and hardware reviews, when it comes to you know, like antivirus anti malware, that sort of thing, and VPNs, they also recommend the same VPN that we do, which is Nord VPN.

 

Liath Dalton 

Now, Nord VPN used to have a Teams option in their different tiers, which was oriented to business and basically allows you to have centralized billing and manage your user accounts, rather than everyone having to go and sign up individually. So obviously, in a group practice context, having that centralized ability to add and remove users and know that you’re just providing the service to any team members who need it, rather than them obtaining it on their own and having to manage multiple different user accounts, billing.

 

Liath Dalton 

There’s benefit to that, but they recently changed and it’s now no longer offered as Nord VPN Teams and is now offered as Nord Layer.

 

Evan Dumas 

Yeah.

 

Evan Dumas 

Mmm.

 

Liath Dalton 

And so one of the questions we caught recently was: Here’s this long technical article from Nord, about the differences between Nord VPN and Nord Layer and in particular, the higher tiers of Nord Layer. And what do I need to be protecting my practice? And is the consumer level one sufficient, or do I have to have Nord layer?

 

Liath Dalton 

What is the answer?

 

Evan Dumas 

The consumer one is just fine. However, one little caveat of, if you are the rare practice out there that has its own IT infrastructure. Say you’re mandated to have on site servers that host your mail or host things like that, and people need to VPN into that, you might need a higher layer and a higher tier of support, or not needing support, but of like configurability, but you’ll want to check in with your various IT professional, you either contract with or have on site, depending on your setup, if you’ve got one of those real rare fancy ones.

 

Evan Dumas 

But the vast majority of the practices we work with use software as a service that exists elsewhere: Google, Microsoft, their EHRs, things like that,

 

Evan Dumas 

that aren’t on site. And so for everybody else out there, the, most common folks, the consumer level is just fine. The Light tier, the cheap one.

 

Liath Dalton 

Mhm.

 

Liath Dalton 

Exactly. So either the Light tier of the consumer oriented one. Or if you are wanting and needing that centralized billing functionality, and being able to add and remove users and have that like admin dashboard so you can administer all of your team members accounts, then if you don’t fall into their that rare category of users that Evan just described, of running your own IT infrastructure and servers, and therefore, having need for the kind of higher level of functionality that the higher tiers of Nord Layer provides, then the Light tier provides everything that is necessary.

 

Liath Dalton 

Which is really just oriented to the Wi-Fi, public Wi Fi security, and not to the remote access components, so we just wanted to provide this update, so folks could could parse through things. Because we know, especially this time of year, it being the beginning of July, at the time of recording, that you likely have more folks on your team traveling, and therefore using VPNs. And wanted to provide the update so that you could make an informed choice, and also, very importantly, not be paying for a higher tier of something, than you need because we know costs can really mount up, and always want to be providing support on how to make decisions for what goes into your tech stack in terms that what meets, of course, the security and functionality needs, but also the cost effectiveness needs as well.

 

Liath Dalton 

So this is just our little PSA update, we’ll include the link to Nords description of the differences and to the Nord pricing page, you can view the different tiers. And then also to Tom’s Guide article on why Nord VPN is the best.

 

Evan Dumas 

Yeah.

 

Liath Dalton 

And last but not least, I should mention that one of the features of our Remote Workspace Security Center that’s part of the Group Practice Care Premium service includes a tutorial for folks on how to install and configure a VPN. And specifically, demoing by Evan, of doing that with Nord VPN, because that’s the one we recommend.

 

Evan Dumas 

Yeah, it’s it’s pretty easy.

 

Liath Dalton 

Yes, indeed. All right, folks, thanks for joining us, and we’ll talk to you next week.

 

Evan Dumas 

Yeah, talk to you next time, everybody.

 

Liath Dalton 

This has been Group Practice Tech, you can find us at PersonCenteredTech.com. For more podcast episodes, you can go to personcenteredtech.com/podcast or click podcast on the menu bar.