Best VPN deals for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month
Just like last year, VPN providers are offering special deals in October because of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM). Perhaps not everyone is aware of this occasion, so below you will also find the story of how NCSAM began. For those who are already familiar, here are the NCSAM VPN deals offered in.
Best VPN deals for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month
National Cybersecurity Awareness Month is a good time to buy a VPN if you don’t have one or no longer like the one you’re using. If you’re planning to visit China, it’s good to buy another one just in case the first one stops working, which might happen at the worst possible time.
1. HideMyAss – 20% off for the one-year deal
Until November, HideMyAss offers a 20% discount for its most popular one-year deal plan of HideMyAss! VPN service. The price of this subscription is $6.99/month or $83.88 billed at once. But if you enter the CYBER20 coupon code at the checkout, you should see the sum decrease to $67.1 or $5.59/month.
HideMyAss VPN has over 1,000 servers in a whopping 190+ countries. It offers strong encryption and servers optimized for streaming and torrenting. HMA was apps for all major platforms, including browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox. Another good think about this VPN is their 24/7 customer support via live chat.
Learn more about this VPN in our HMA review
2. PureVPN offers you to gift a dozen free VPN accounts
This year, PureVPN is offering not a discount but a chance to gift your friends and family with a VPN account. If you buy any of the three premium plans (monthly, annual, bi-annual), you get 12 invitations that you can send to your circles. Each invitation contains one month of PureVPN for free.
PureVPN is a cheap service that works on a variety of devices and platforms. It has 2,000+ servers across 140+ countries and is able to provide great speeds. PureVPN also unblocks Netflix but allows P2P traffic only in some locations, which don’t include the US, the UK, or Canada.
Find out more about this service in our PureVPN review
3. ExpressVPN – 12 months with 35% off
Choosing this offer means that you’ll be saving $55.45 – for that, you can grab 6 months extra! It’s widely known that ExpressVPN has some of the biggest prices in this industry that are gradually rising, so waiting for even better deals is ill-advised.
ExpressVPN provides excellent security, top speeds, and global coverage with the help of 3,000+ servers in more than 90 countries. This provider offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, so if you change your mind, you can get a refund easily.
Read more about it in our ExpressVPN review
4. NordVPN – 3 years with 70% off
NordVPN offers a huge 70% discount which applies to its 3-year plan. In total, the price is only $125.64, meaning that you save $300 in total. Do you know what’s the other name of this deal? “Grab it while you can!”
NordVPN is one of the top two providers, well known for its excellent security and privacy. While it doesn’t provide a free trial, that’s not a big issue. Even if you decide you no longer need NordVPN, you can always exercise its 30-day money-back guarantee.
You can learn more about it in our NordVPN review
5. CyberGhost – 3 years with 77% off
You can get CyberGhost VPN for three years for $2.99 a month only. The total price of $107.64 means you’ll be saving quite a fortune or $358.56 to be exact.
One great thing about CyberGhost VPN is its extended money-back period. While 30 days is the most common option, a 45-day money-back guarantee really helps this service to stand out. Additionally, there’s a 24-hour free trial for those who want to check it out without providing payment details.
Find out more about this provider in our CyberGhost VPN review.
6. Surfshark VPN – 2 years with 83% off
Surfshark VPN is offering probably the best NCSAM deal for its 2-year plan. Paying $1.99 a month for this top-level VPN service will also help you save $239 in total. Asking for more would be straight out insulting.
In recent years, Surfshark has established itself among the best VPN services thanks to its blistering speeds, excellent security, and an unlimited number of simultaneous connections. It also provides a week-long free trial on Google Store and App Store, in addition to a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Eager to find out more about this service? Read our Surfshark VPN review
7. Ivacy VPN – 5 years with 87% off
For only $1.33/month, you can get a premium VPN service in Ivacy for a nearly-extinct five-year term. You’ll be paying $80 in total and saving a mind-shattering $517! With this deal, you can forget the tricks and go all-in on treats.
What’s more, there’s also a limited-time 2-year deal for $1.99/month, which translates into shaving 80% off that price.
Ivacy VPN is known for its excellent security, fast speeds, and low prices. You can try it for one day for free without providing payment details, and you can always exercise your right to a refund during the first 30 days.
Interested what else this service has to offer? Check out our Ivacy VPN review
8. Private Internet Access – 1 year with 76% off
One of the most popular of all VPN services, Private Internet Access (PIA) delivers a slight discount to its annual plan, which will cost you $2.42/month instead of regular $3.33/month. We’ve done the math for you – it results in saving $10.95 per year.
Low prices were always one of PIA’s key selling points, so we couldn’t expect big discounts. After all, this service has good security credentials, works in most Western countries, allows torrenting, and unblocks Netflix. You can also test if PIA is right for you for 7 days.
See what else we have to say about this tool in our Private Internet Access VPN review
What is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month?
National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, NCSAM in short, is a clumsily-named initiative to inform us all about the possible dangers lurking beneath the dark waters of the internet and how we can protect ourselves and our families from them. The idea was born way back in 2003, when the US Department of Homeland Security, along with the National Cyber Security Alliance, decided on a mutual effort to raise awareness of cybercrime and online security in an ever-growing digital world.
Why do we need this National Cybersecurity Awareness Month?
The year 2006 ended with the TJX network being hacked and over 90 million credit cards exposed. Two years passed, and Heartland Payment Systems suffered a breach that led to the information of 134 million credit cards being stolen. The following decade was marked by Sony’s PlayStation Network hack, putting their site down for a month and 12 million credit card numbers along with passwords and other personal data being stolen.
Think only home users and video game lovers can suffer a severe attack? Let’s not forget the US Office of Personnel Management system hack that exposed personal and classified information of more than 22 million federal employees and their family members. You think that tech companies and startups know enough to make sure their data is safe? Let’s jump two years back from the present day to when an attack on Uber had 57 million users’ and 600,000 drivers’ personal info stolen. To make matters worse, the company kept silent about it for almost a year!
We also want to point to an attack that started during the National Cybersecurity Awareness Month of 2013, before Thanksgiving, when around 110 million people’s credit card information and/or personal data was hacked via Target Stores. Do you buy at Target? In 2017, it was still clear that the progress they made was not sufficient to make sure a similar attack cannot happen again.
Finally, the security breach that we hope will never be surpassed happened in 2014, when real names, email addresses, dates of birth, and telephone numbers of 500 million Yahoo users ended up in the hands of hackers. While this number is the highest of all other hacks mentioned here put together, in 2017, Yahoo re-estimated it to a mind-boggling 3 billion, which means no more and no less than all of their users! Therefore, if for whatever reason you’re still using that [email protected] for your business and personal communication and haven’t changed its password (frankthepug) since 1997, you’d better stop!
So, we find ourselves in the year 2018, still facing cybersecurity risks. Just a month ago, everybody was talking about the Facebook hack and its impact on our privacy. This leads us to believe that while the NCSAM would benefit from a more wieldy name, all of us would surely benefit if this Awareness Month turned into an Awareness Season.
What can you do to be safe on the web?
The time when most dangers were caused by floppy disks and USB drivers full of viruses has come to an end, now the biggest risks we face lurk online. This means that no matter what you do on the internet – be it browsing, streaming, torrenting, or gaming – you’d better make sure your connection is as private and secure as possible. The best way to be protected online is to use a VPN, creating a safe tunnel between you and your virtual destination.
Conclusion
Those VPNs that don’t offer any deals related to National Cyber Security Awareness Month include many on our best VPNs list, such as TorGuard or Astrill VPN. Therefore we will keep updating this section if new deals surface – make sure you stop by in a few days. But if you already see a deal that you like – grab it now. If you miss it, you will have to wait until next year to get a special National Cyber Security Awareness Month 2020 promotion!