The single-device VPN is a partial measure that creates a false sense of perimeter coverage.
When a VPN is installed and active on a primary workstation, that device's outbound traffic is encrypted. Every other device sharing the same network connection — a secondary machine, a tablet, a phone, any IoT device — operates without that protection. Those devices transmit their traffic through the same ISP connection, unencrypted, and generate metadata that is associated with the same physical location.
For a remote business operator running any kind of multi-device environment, this is not a minor gap. It is a structural exposure that device-by-device VPN configuration attempts to solve through repetition rather than architecture.
Router-level deployment closes this at the source. When the VPN is configured at the hardware layer, every device that connects to that router inherits the encrypted tunnel by default. There is no configuration required per device. There is no risk of a device connecting before the VPN is active.
Surfshark carries Platinum designation in the RuleDraft framework specifically for operators managing broader network environments — multi-device setups, secondary machines, or infrastructure requiring consistent, network-wide isolation without manual per-device management. It is the right tool in its category, correctly placed in a larger architecture.