Privacy and security are important considerations when you’re online. Whether you’re working remotely or just surfing the web, there are a variety of legitimate and malicious entities that could attempt to snoop on your internet activities. They may also try to steal sensitive private data.

Fortunately, there are multiple ways to protect yourself. One way is by using a VPN, a technology that plays a big role in cybersecurity by securing personal data and keeping internet activities private.

In this article, we’ll look at what a VPN can do for you, how a VPN works, and why using one is necessary. We’ll even show you how to set up a VPN for various systems. Let’s get started by explaining what a VPN does.

How does a VPN work?

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, and its definition hides in those words. It’s virtual because it’s created using software. It’s private because your data is encrypted, and your device’s IP address is hidden. It’s a network because it’s used to create a connection between computers and devices.

VPNs act like a tunnel for data between your device and the internet. When you use a VPN connection, every bit of data you transfer first goes to a VPN server — which could be local or located thousands of miles away. This helps users appear as if they’re connected from another country.

The VPN server encrypts the data you send and forwards it to the website or internet service you’re connected to. When the service responds and sends data back, it’s sent to the VPN server, encrypted, and forwarded to your device.

Any service or website you connect to will see the VPN as the device that’s connected. They can’t detect your original IP address and can only access the IP address of the VPN. This also prevents your ISP from tracking your online activity because all traffic is encrypted.

Why should I use a VPN?

Now that you know what VPNs do, let’s explore some of the most common reasons why people use them.

Remote work

People often use a VPN for remote work because it ensures the security and privacy of their connection to work resources. Working remotely has traditionally been risky because employees have to access sensitive data over whatever internet connection is available, including those that are unsecured.

Software development

Software takes time and creativity to build. If you’re a programmer, you want to ensure that your code — or the code you write for a client — is protected from prying eyes. If you use a VPN, you can prevent data leaks and improve your overall online privacy.

A VPN will encrypt all the data that comes from your machine, making it useless to hackers or anyone trying to steal source code.

As a developer, there may be times that you have to test how your application works in another country or time zone. You may have to check that the correct time and default language for the location is being used.

Most VPN providers have servers in multiple countries worldwide. This allows you to test your app as if it were in those countries.

Public Wi-Fi

VPNs are also something you should consider for your personal internet use. This is especially the case if you’re accessing the internet with a public Wi-Fi connection. Public Wi-Fi spots are common hangouts for hackers who use the free Wi-Fi connection to set up a man-in-the-middle attack.

By using a device that masquerades as the real Wi-Fi connection, a hacker can harvest the unsecured data of anyone who connects to it. Using a VPN secures your connection so that even with a man-in-the-middle attack, your connection and data remain private.

Data privacy

Even if you stay away from public Wi-Fi and only use your home internet connection, your data and browsing activities may not remain private.

Since 2017, when ISPs lobbied the government to pass a law that removed the right to internet privacy, ISPs have been harvesting, collecting, and selling their users’ data to the highest bidder. A VPN will keep this data private and prevent your ISP from tracking those activities.

What are the drawbacks of using a VPN?

While a VPN will keep your connection secure and your data safe, there are some potential drawbacks to using one.

• Blocked services: Some services may require that you have a valid IP address to use them. Some VPNs can mask your IP and cause issues with these services. An example is if you use a location-based service and the VPN is in another state or country.
• Downtime: Just like every other type of software, VPNs need maintenance. Downtimes can cause interrupted VPN service.
• Dropped VPN connections: A connection to a VPN tunnel can drop just like any other connection, and if you don’t notice when this happens, you could browse the internet without the security or privacy it provides. To prevent this, you can set up an automatic connection termination if the VPN tunnel drops.
• Connection speed: With a VPN, you depend on software on a server somewhere to forward your connection. If this server is far away from you or is having issues, it can slow down your connection speed.

Where to get a VPN

Many companies provide VPNs either for personal or business use. If you work remotely and connect to work resources, your company might provide you with VPN software to secure this connection.

If you don’t have that option, you can find plenty of commercial VPN providers online. Each VPN provider will have different features and pricing. Here are some popular ones:

How to set up a VPN

Luckily, most VPN providers will have software available that you only have to download and install to protect all of your internet traffic. If you purchased a VPN subscription, you can find it on the vendor’s website. If you’re using a work computer, the IT staff may have already installed it on your device or will provide you with the software to install yourself.

There may be times when you have to set up a VPN manually, and you can do this through your operating system. All you’ll need to connect to a VPN is the URL of the VPN server you’re connecting to, your username, and your password. After you have those, follow the steps below that match your operating system:

Set up a VPN on Windows

Follow these steps to set up a VPN connection on your Windows computer:

1. Search for VPN using Cortana.
2. Select ‘VPN Settings’ from the results and click on the + sign next to ‘Add a New VPN Connection.’
3. Choose ‘Windows built-in’ from the drop-down menu in the first field. This will make your VPN connection type automatic, but if you already know the type of VPN you’re using, you can choose that as well.
4. Fill out the rest of the details on the form with the information from your VPN provider.
5. Save the information.
6. Click on your Wi-Fi connection and select the VPN connection you just created.

Set up a VPN on Mac

Here are the steps you need to follow to set up a VPN connection on your Mac computer:

1. Open ‘System Preferences’ and click on ‘Network.’
2. In the ‘Network’ screen, click on the + sign on the left side and choose ‘VPN.’
3. In the screen that pops up, enter the details from your VPN provider, including VPN type, server address, and authentication settings.
4. Click ‘Apply’ then ‘Ok,’ and your VPN is ready to use.

Set up a VPN on Android

Follow these steps to set up a VPN connection on your Android phone:

1. Open ‘Settings’ on your Android phone.
2. Search for ‘Wireless and Network’ and click ‘More.’
3. Enter the details from your VPN provider, including VPN type, server address, and authentication settings.
4. Click ‘Save,’ and your connection is ready.

Set up a VPN on iOS

Follow these steps to set up a VPN connection on your iPhone:

1. Open ‘Settings’, navigate to ‘General’, and choose ‘Type’.
2. Click ‘Add VPN Configuration’ and choose ‘Type.’
3. Choose the preferred VPN type.
4. Click ‘Back.’
5. Enter the details you got from the VPN provider, including the server, credentials, and a description.
6. Click ‘Done’ and switch the status to ‘On.’

Conclusion

Not only businesses or people trying to torrent movies use VPNs. VPNs are important to anyone concerned about the privacy of their internet activity and the security of their sensitive data. Even developers use VPNs to protect the intellectual property rights of their work.

If you’re just getting into coding, your first stop should be to our coding course catalog, where you can find a course that’ll start you off on your coding journey. You may want to use a VPN to protect your work if you don’t already use one.

Cybersecurity Courses & Tutorials | Codecademy

Cybersecurity is a fast-growing field that addresses the security risks of our increasingly connected digital world. Learn cybersecurity, and you will learn how users, companies, and even governments protect themselves and recover from, cyber threats and attacks. Start defending yourself, or your or…

Practice makes perfect, and practice is a necessity when you’re learning to code. Courses and books on coding will teach you the fundamentals you need to get started, but writing code will lock all those concepts in place.

Code challenges are a great way to practice your coding skills. They’re small problems designed to teach you a programming concept that can usually be solved with a few lines of code. Even though these types of problems are bite-sized, they can be fun and truly challenge your skills.

In this article, we have 10 SQL code challenges that are suitable for beginner developers who are learning SQL. If you already know SQL, you can start on them today and try a few each day to practice your database query skills. If you don’t know SQL yet, check out What is SQL to get an idea of what it is, and at the end of this article, we’ll show you how to start learning more about it.

10 top SQL beginner code challenges

These SQL challenges are suitable for beginner programmers, but you’ll need to know the basics of using SQL to complete them. If you know some SQL but want to refresh your knowledge, our Learn SQL course is a great option.

Since this is SQL, each query will need a database and one or more tables to work with. In each challenge, we’ll give you the challenge and the table structures necessary to come up with the solution.

You can use the type of development environment that suits you best. Either use a locally running database or create the tables and run the queries in one of the many online tools that allow you to run SQL online, like SQL Fiddle.

1. Select each number as its opposite

In this challenge, your database table is structured like this:

The challenge is to write a SQL query for this table that’ll return all the opposites of the values in the Value column. If a number is negative, make it positive and vice versa. Here’s what your query should return:

56, -76, 84, -96, 47

2. Select all the divisions that have had revenue this year

In this challenge, your database table is:

Your task is to write a query for this table that’ll return just the division ids for all the divisions that had positive revenue in 2021. Your query should return the following values:

1, 4

3. Find the century for the year

In this challenge, your database table looks like this:

Write a query for the table above that’ll return the century that the year is in. The results of this query should have the following values:

18, 21, 17, 19, 20

4. Even or odd

Here’s the database table you’ll use in this challenge:

Your job is to return whether or not the number in the Value column is even or odd rather than returning the number itself. Your query should return the following values:

even, odd, odd, even, odd

5. Group by age

This is the table structure that you’ll use for this SQL challenge:

The challenge is to write a query that’ll group all the people by their age, along with a count of the people that are the same age. Here’s what the result set should look like:

6. Return a greeting string

Here’s the table for this challenge:

Your challenge is to return a result set that has a column called Greeting in it. This column will take the value from the Name column and return a string like this, with the name inserted into it:

Hi, Bob! How are you today?

7. Find the best selling products

Use this data in your table for this challenge:

Write a query that returns only the top five selling items in the table.

8. Who needs a passport

Here’s the data for this challenge:

The challenge here is to assume that you’re a Canadian border guard. Citizens from the United States and Canada don’t need a passport to cross the border. Write a query to find all the names that need a passport to cross.

9. Just the unique values

For this challenge, let’s reuse this table:

For this challenge, write a query that’ll return all unique ages from the table. Your result should have these values:

18, 19, 20, 21

10. Add the ages

For this challenge, use the same table again:

Your task for this challenge is to return a sum of all the ages in the table. Your query should return 139.

Improve your SQL skills with courses and other challenges

If you like testing your SQL skills with these challenges, consider checking out more of our coding challenges here. Competing in our weekly and daily code challenges is a great way to keep your SQL skills in top condition while learning even more things you can do with the language.

If you need to brush up on your SQL skills to complete these challenges — or want to explore what else you can do with SQL — consider taking one of our SQL coding courses. If you’re a beginner or you’re a little rusty, you can check out Learn SQL. This course will teach you how to interact with relational databases using SQL and is suitable for beginners. If you want to take your SQL studies a step further, our Analyze Data with SQL course will teach you not only advanced SQL queries but also data science concepts. Why not get started today?

SQL Courses & Tutorials | Codecademy

SQL is the standard relational data management language. We live in a data-driven world, and there are many businesses that store their information inside large, relational databases. This makes SQL a great skill not only for data scientists and engineers, but for anyone wanting to be data-literate.

PHP is a programming language used to script websites that are dynamic and interactive. You’ll find it in various types of web applications, from e-commerce websites to CRM systems like HubSpot and Salesforce.

The term PHP stands for PHP Hypertext Preprocessor. Originally, the “PHP” within the acronym stood for Personal Home Page. But, as the language evolved and caught on, it ended up being used for more than just personal home pages. So, that acronym, in turn, became just the “P” within PHP.

Below, we’ll take a closer look at PHP, how it works, its relationship with HTML, examples of PHP in action, and more.

PHP basic functions

Within PHP code operating a website, variables and ordered and associative arrays can be managed. PHP code also handles and validates HTML forms and executes code loops.

Our PHP courses cover these functions as well as examples of the types of products this code facilitates.

PHP’s relationship to HTML

A big part of PHP’s value is its use as a dynamic scripting language that works hand-in-hand with HTML.

A PHP interpreter makes a website dynamic and customizable, allowing a site to respond to user input or information in some expected way. The interpreter is a key link between the user and web server, databases, and the relevant files or responses sent back to that user.

Ease of use

Despite its power and utility, PHP is one of the easiest programming languages to learn. It’s simple, has forgiving syntax, and has ample documentation and resources available to those learning the language.

PHP’s ease of use has made it a staple for Back-End Engineers and Full-Stack Engineers. It also contains built-in security features like data encryption and access restrictions, removing the need for separate work to ensure the security of websites. Plus, PHP code often powers online forms.

Now that you’ve got an idea of what PHP is used for, let’s explore some examples of PHP in action.

PHP in action: ScienceSoft

ScienceSoft, a Dallas-based IT consulting and software development provider, offers examples of how they’ve used PHP scripting for clients’ projects:

Audio equipment shopping

This smart, in-store headphone-check digital signage stand uses PHP to allow users to compare and contrast multiple models. This includes a playlist of test tracks, the ability to tell the stand’s app what model a customer wants, and the production of graphs comparing models for a customer.

Movie theater chain ticket booking

This European movie theater chain modernized its mobile ticketing app to include seat plans, notifications, and in-depth information about their movies. Using PHP, the app can provide customers with a choice of showtimes, theaters, and seat types.

Content for augmented reality advertising displays

This manufacturer of digital interactive advertising and entertainment displays for stores and shopping malls needed an administrative panel to create and manage the content for these screens.

So, they turned to ScienceSoft to create an administrative control that would allow either the display maker or the local store or mall user to control the content. PHP also made it possible to control the displays remotely using a web application.

Management of a central database of college information

This provider of a database with information on US colleges, admissions, and scholarship details worked solely with imports of information from Excel spreadsheets. They needed a cloud-based information management solution to store their large volumes of data, integrate with other software, and automate data reporting to their clients.

PHP, among other languages and tools, helped build this solution.

PHP in action: Symfony

Symfony, a French PHP framework provider, worked on PHP-based projects for both business and political entities.

In 2020, Symfony participated in hackathons that produced security improvements for open-source software used by the European Commission. In 2016, a volunteer programmer used Symfony PHP caches to power the campaign website for Emmanuel Macron, who went on to win the presidency of France.

Also that year, Liip, a Swiss digital agency, built an API using Symfony PHP for Swiss retailer Migros to organize and manage data about its products so that it could be searched and accessed in real-time to manage the retailer’s business.

PHP in action: CakePHP

CakePHP is an open-source project by the Las Vegas-based Cake Software Foundation. CakePHP has worked for a variety of companies in different fields. These include:

• Internet Marketing Ninjas, who used PHP to build its marketing and management tools and a central hub for users.
• World-Architects, who used PHP to build its profiles of architects and their projects, including online visual presentations.
• Child Care Daily App, who used PHP to build an app to serve parents of children in San Diego-based daycare centers.
• Printivo.com, a Nigerian customized printing company, who used PHP for their customer-facing website and internal order management systems.

These examples of PHP in action show how many areas of commerce, society, and everyday life this programming language touches. It often plays a key part in designing websites and operating them on a daily basis.

Getting Started with PHP

As you can see, PHP is a powerful language with a wide range of applications. Still, the best way to learn about its utility is to use it yourself.

If you’re ready to start using PHP, check out our Learn PHP course. We’ll teach you the basics of the language’s syntax along with many other subjects like variables, functions, loops, and more.

If you find yourself stuck while completing the course, we also offer resources like this article on common mistakes made with PHP conditionals.

PHP Courses & Tutorials | Codecademy

PHP is a general-purpose scripting language widely used as a server-side language for creating dynamic web pages. Though its reputation is mixed, PHP is still extremely popular and is used in over 75% of all websites where the server-side programming language is known.

Web Development Courses & Tutorials | Codecademy

Web Development is the practice of developing websites and web apps that live on the internet. Whether you’re interested in front-end, back-end, or going full-stack, the content in our Web Development domain will help you get there.

“What is IT?” is a broad question to answer. It’s almost like asking, “what is the Earth?”

Even if they aren’t technologically inclined, most people know that IT stands for information technology. Still, many systems fall under this category, with almost as many different functions.

The term “IT” was first coined by authors Leavitt and Whisler in the Harvard Business Review. While defining information technology, they broke it down into 3 main parts:

1. Processing information rapidly using computers.
2. Applying statistics and math to make decisions and solve problems.
3. Simulating higher-order thinking with computer programs.

The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) gives us a more general definition of IT, describing it as the “study, design, development, application, implementation, support, or management of computer-based information systems.”

Breaking down IT

SearchDataCenter.com provides a more current definition of IT — calling it “the use of any computers, storage, networking, and other physical devices, infrastructure, and processes to create, process, store, secure, and exchange all forms of electronic data.”

They also provide several examples of IT work, such as:

• Server upgrades
• Security monitoring
• Data collection and processing
• Creating and applying new software
• Technology upgrades to serve a business
• The practice of user support

Including software in this mix means transactions systems, email and web servers, and even CRM systems can all be considered “IT.”

The communication element

Another, more modern way of thinking about IT considers its integration with communications, more commonly known as ICT (information and communications technology).

In short, ICT emphasizes IT’s role in communication, encompassing cell networks and digital TVs — and even older technologies such as landline phones and radio and television broadcasting.

With ICT, we can do things like use AI (artificial intelligence) to answer and route phone calls. ICT also enables actions like transcribing a voice message and turning that into data. This can be useful for replying to the message more easily or entering the data into data processing and management systems.

Computer science and IT

Aspects of IT and “computer science” can overlap. But, while IT tends to be about how technology serves businesses, computer science is purely about the logic and technology that’s used or being developed.

Computer science is a math-based discipline for programming technological systems to run. IT professionals don’t necessarily need a background in computer science, but it can definitely lead to more job opportunities.

Computer Scientists write code to create software that makes use of IT. They’re also more qualified to analyze systems than professionals who only have basic IT qualifications.

If you’re interested in a career in computer science or IT, you’ll need to learn the programming languages underlying IT systems, such as:

Each of the languages above is both versatile and powerful. Their uses include data analysis, hardware programming, back-end development, and more.

Or, if you’d prefer a more tailored course that’ll teach you everything you need to know, check out our Computer Science Career Path.

Data science and IT

As with computer science, you can work in IT without a background in data science — but it’ll definitely open the door to more opportunities.

Data science involves using various tools to collect, manipulate, and analyze data for valuable insights. Often, data visualization techniques are used to make it easier to understand.

Programming languages like Python, R, and SQL lie at the heart of data science. To learn more about these languages — and their associated libraries and frameworks like pandas and Matplotlib — check out our Data Scientist Career Path. Or, take a look through our data science career guide.

The answer

Having asked, “what is IT?” the answer appears to be “many things.” In short, it includes all the technologies used to handle information and the communications between them.

Then there’s hardware and software, which are also information technologies. Hardware can mean anything from security systems to user interfaces — even something like virtual reality goggles. Software usually involves coding to create and implement any application for a wide variety and range of purposes and tasks. Without that, neither hardware nor communications will work.

For those interested in working in IT, the most important part of the answer is the science behind programming languages and data management. These are expressed through computer science and data science. You can be an IT professional, but to be a good one, these disciplines are a key part of the answer to “What is IT?”

Computer Science Courses & Tutorials | Codecademy

Computer Science, often referred to as “CS,” is a broad term that covers many sub-disciplines, including the worlds of software *and* hardware. It can be found in every piece of technology you use, from a smartphone or gaming console to a car or ATM. With so many applications for Computer Science, t…