Privacy & Security 3 min. read

Independent study calls Hotspot Shield the fastest, most secure VPN technology

Independent study calls Hotspot Shield the fastest, most secure VPN technology

An independent study performed by AV-Test, a security and performance auditor, found AnchorFree’s Hotspot Shield VPN technology to be the fastest and most secure among all consumer and enterprise VPN products. In the test, our technology was 4x faster than Cisco.

You can read the full report here.

AV-Test performed their study in April and released the report today. For its testing, AV-Test reviewed the 12 leading VPN solutions used by both consumers and enterprises—including AnchorFree’s Hotspot Shield Elite—and performed more than 130,000 performance tests to measure the speed and overall performance of each product.

The study also included testing the five most common leaks for security and privacy protection, reviewed each product for ease of use, and compared the comprehensiveness of their feature set.

Over the last 10 years, AnchorFree’s focus has been on technology development and R&D—bridging performance and security.

For its performance findings, the report found that Hotspot Shield Elite came in first ahead of any consumer or enterprise VPN technology and was 4x faster than Cisco.

On its security findings, the report says: “Hotspot Shield Elite passed all security checks. No leaks were detected, all necessary security features are present as well as being one of only three products providing additional security features in form of malicious website blocks. No slip-up in this category ensured the top spot for the product.”

“With its seconds to none showing in the performance test, Hotspot Shield Elite make it hard for a user to see past this VPN solution, also taking the top of the security and usability placing as well as providing for all essential needs of the VPN users,” the AV-Test continued. “Hotspot Shield Elite provides a comprehensive VPN product which came first in the overall testing.”

While Hotspot Shield Elite excelled in all areas of the test, perhaps our most dominant performance arrived in the speed tests.

What’s our secret sauce?

AV-Test Hotspot Shield

At AnchorFree, we invested heavily in developing our own proprietary VPN protocol to make it better than all common options currently available. After many years in development, in 2016 the Catapult Hydra (or Hydra, for short) protocol was released and implemented on Hotspot Shield iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac. Hydra, with over 30 patents, optimizes multiple server connections that are significantly stronger and faster over long distances (for instance, connecting between Frankfurt and San Francisco could be twice as fast when using Hotspot Shield than without it).

The technology has been opened up as a software development kit (SDK) that has been integrated with third-party app developers that want to provide WiFi security and privacy to their users within their applications. Currently, about 60% of the world’s largest security companies and large telecommunications companies use AnchorFree’s Hotspot Shield Hydra technology to provide security and privacy to their users.

The technology is proprietary and developed in-house by AnchorFree’s engineers (traditionally, VPN products all utilize the same open-source protocol) and we invested heavily into making it a reality—delivering our users the ultimate in performance and next-level security.

AnchorFree commisioned the report from AV-Test as we wanted to validate our work by an independent source. It’s therefore incredibly gratifying for all of us at AnchorFree to see our hard work and dedication verified.

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