Surfshark focuses on creating humanized security products.
Here, you’ll learn how we maintain the highest security standards for all our services and products, all to your benefit:
Discover how our high-end server infrastructure delivers top-level user privacy worldwide.
Learn which certifications, patents, and audits
verify the quality of our products.
Explore our initiatives, showcasing a commitment to high industry standards.
To ensure your security using Surfshark, we comply with the strictest security measures. Learn about our security implementations, testing procedures, and other methods that Surfshark and its products undergo to maintain the safety of our services and customers.
Surfshark offers WireGuard, OpenVPN, and IKEv2 VPN protocols and uses robust AES-256-GCM encryption. Along with AES-256 encryption, Surfshark uses ChaCha20 encryption for the WireGuard protocol. Moreover, Surfshark uses a 2048-bit version of the RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) encryption keys.
We comply with third-party bug bounty at Surfshark. It means that we employ reliable companies to search for bugs or system vulnerabilities in our software. This allows us to better identify and patch even the most minor security flaws and protect our clients and company operations.
We check for exploitable vulnerabilities and assess the software by executing frequent system penetration tests. Regularly performed internal and external pen testing guarantees a thorough assessment of our service and products.
Our design process includes security and privacy threat modeling. Using Static Application Security Testing (SAST) and other methods to find security gaps, threats, and vulnerabilities, we can reduce or eliminate potential dangers by implementing sufficient countermeasures.
At Surfshark, we use various formats of security measures for our applications and internal operations to enhance security for the login process, prevent particular attacks, such as brute-forcing, and ensure system and data access is limited to authorized personnel.
Our company uses a Privileged Access Management (PAM) system to strictly control and monitor IT network access. This system allows only approved staff to have the necessary access and includes detailed auditing to keep track of all activities, improving our security and meeting industry standards.
Surfshark monitors its IT infrastructure for suspicious and malicious activity and possible attacks. The monitoring is performed 24/7, and all processes are automated.
User logins in Surfshark’s database are encrypted, ensuring no one can decrypt the stored login information. Even in the event of a server data breach, no one could decode the users’ stored logins.
Surfshark uses automated unattended upgrades to ensure our production environment meets the software requirements.
We use an automated system that monitors and informs us about the latest threats worldwide based on knowledge, expertise, and experience about incidence, evaluation, and threat actors — Surfshark is constantly up to date.
Our company adheres to the PoLP, also known as the principle of minimal privilege (PoMP). This means that our personnel only have access to the tools, resources, and operational systems required for their responsibilities at work. Our customer support operates with the least-required access.
Surfshark aims to provide the best possible environment in pursuit of higher user privacy and security. Increasing the number of servers and converting them into RAM-only profiles are only a few substantial steps toward more private and transparent practices in the VPN market.
Surfshark is among the first providers in the VPN industry to upgrade its servers to RAM-only infrastructure, meaning that servers boot up using only RAM memory instead of hard drive storage.
By shifting the servers from 1 Gbps to 10 Gbps, Surfshark VPN connection is faster and gives the new servers better throughput, which means they can transfer big chunks of data quicker. Since the data is throughput faster, the servers host more people, and the speeds are more stable. Moreover, the servers are less crowded.
You can select from over 3,200+ servers spread across 100 countries. Surfshark also covers many VPN-restricting states and offers virtual locations that appear to be in one country but physically are in another. The more high-quality servers a VPN offers, the faster and less crowded the server connection is.
Most of our VPN servers are destroyed and rebuilt regularly. This way, we reduce the window of vulnerability for our systems.
For us at Surfshark quality is the base of our company and one of the key components to our customers’ satisfaction. We seek to maintain the quality of our products through frequent third-party assurance reports, patents, and other practices that demonstrate our high standards while constantly working on innovation.
With the help of SAST, Surfshark regularly performs software quality assurance.
To ensure our service quality, Surfshark offers 24/7 customer support. The support agents can be reached via live chat or email.
Surfshark runs background checks on new employees to verify their reputation and reduce internal threats.
The no-logs policy is at the core of every secure VPN. Deloitte, one of the Big Four auditing firms, confirmed that Surfshark adheres scrupulously to the commitments made in our no-logs policy. This now gives our users and potential clients concrete proof that Surfshark complies with the highest privacy and quality requirements.
Robust and secure server infrastructure is vital to excellent VPN service. That’s why we employ independent auditors to evaluate our service’s security and software. Cure53, a German company, thoroughly studied our infrastructure and found no significant concerns.
Another audit by Cure53 revealed that our browser extensions stand out for their robust security. The study confirms that our internal security measures successfully reduce security risks, and now we can provide proof that the safety of our products is accurate.
Surfshark Antivirus has been certified by an independent German IT security organization, AV-Test, and scored 6/6 for reliable protection, 5.5/6 for performance, and 6/6 for usability. Moreover, according to VB100 certifications from Virus Bulletin, our Surfshark Antivirus complies with the strictest security measures.
You can find the AV-Test seal of approval here and the VB100 Virus Bulletin certificates here.
Surfshark’s Android app has passed an independent Mobile App Security Assessment (MASA) security certification! This proves that our app is safe to use and handles user data according to the globally accepted MASA requirements.
See the detailed results of Surfshark’s certification here.
We continuously develop new and better features to improve our service and exceed industry standards. One of our most recent innovations is Nexus — a technology that connects all our VPN servers to a single, global network. Nexus also enables groundbreaking features like IP Rotator and Dynamic MultiHop.
Changes the user’s exit IP address on the chosen location every five to ten minutes without disconnecting the user from the VPN.
Enables users to select their VPN entry and exit destination from the existing list of servers.
Surfshark was granted a few patents — exclusive rights — for our inventions, methods, and ideas. This legally allows us to prevent others from creating, using, or selling our innovations for a limited time.
As a cybersecurity company, transparency is crucial to earning our users’ trust. That is why we regularly reveal the inner workings of Surfshark by publishing annual reports and disclosing government inquiries or any other legal requests.
We understand and welcome the growing need for transparency within the sector, such as the Digital Services Act (DSA). As a cybersecurity company, we feel it’s our duty to meet the highest standards and being transparent is one of them. In addition to the Warrant Canary, which was always present on our website, we’re also presenting our Transparency Report, which specifies the type and number of requests received. We will update these numbers accordingly every quarter.
| Type | Requests received |
| DMCA requests | 245444 |
| Inquiries from government institutions | 34 |
| National Security letters | 0 |
| Gag orders | 0 |
| Warrants from any government organization | 0 |
| Requests received in accordance with DSA | 0 |
Surfshark works closely with the VPN Trust Initiative — an industry-led consortium that promotes consumer safety and privacy online. We support and follow VTI principles, which serve as a baseline for how VPN providers should operate. The principles cover security, advertising practices, privacy, disclosure and transparency, and social responsibility.
Surfshark has joined forces with a digital rights watchdog and internet monitoring organization — NetBlocks. Their mission and objectives of raising awareness and expanding the distribution of information about global internet outages resonate with our values of unrestricted and available to all internet.