Surfshark immediately launched its brand-new Dausos VPN connection protocol, which the corporate says elevates three key parts for VPN customers: 30% quicker speeds than industry-standard protocols, enhanced safety with a hybrid post-quantum encryption and devoted, personal server-side tunnels for every particular person session.
Which means that Dausos ought to give Surfshark customers smoother connections, improved privateness and quicker efficiency to learn data-heavy actions, like streaming and gaming.
VPN protocols are primarily the foundations that decide the encrypted connection between your system and the web whereas on a VPN. Lengthy gone are the times when OpenVPN dominated because the hotshot of the VPN protocol world. It is nonetheless a superb protocol with hermetic safety that may be nice once you want steady connections on any community or wish to bypass firewalls, however it’s a lumbering hulk that wasn’t constructed for the pace or safety necessities of immediately’s VPN customers.
Trendy instances name for contemporary VPN protocols, and Surfshark is the most recent of CNET’s prime VPN picks to spin up its personal proprietary next-generation VPN protocol. Dausos sounds poised to problem WireGuard because the protocol of selection for Surfshark customers who need speedy connections with out compromising safety.
One of many largest improvements that Dausos brings to the desk is its skill to ship a devoted tunnel for every particular person consumer session, which Surfshark says can optimize efficiency by dynamically adapting to community situations and system capabilities for every particular person connection.
Isolating consumer’s knowledge site visitors is a key ingredient right here. “Whereas the chance of cross-traffic publicity in trendy VPNs could be very low, our distinctive protocol design goes the additional mile to make sure a clear, personal, and safe path for every consumer’s knowledge,” Surfshark’s lead techniques engineer Karolis Kaciulis mentioned in a press release.
Surfshark representatives instructed me by way of e-mail that this isolation occurs on the server aspect, and each time a consumer connects to a server, the server creates a brand new community interface particular to that consumer and VPN session. The consultant defined that every consumer will get their very own server-side tunnel, so no community house logic or different sources are shared when a consumer connects by way of the Dausos protocol. This differs from the standard methodology, the place the server aspect has a single community interface that every one customers of a specific protocol share.
That is all very technical, however it’s virtually like making a freeway particularly on your web connection, as an alternative of getting to share that freeway with different customers.
“The protocol’s distinctive design avoids pointless and redundant checking of knowledge packets, which reinforces connection efficiency and even additional prevents the theoretical risk of knowledge packets interfering with one another,” Kaciulis mentioned within the press launch.
Surfshark additionally incorporates post-compromise safety with its Dausos protocol, which the corporate says takes the idea of excellent ahead secrecy to the following stage. With PFS, each time a consumer connects to a VPN server, a contemporary set of ephemeral encryption keys are generated. Each couple of minutes, a brand new set of keys is regenerated in order that an attacker would not be capable to decrypt a consumer’s previous VPN session knowledge from a single key compromise. Nonetheless, the brand new encryption keys are typically derived from the previous keys, which signifies that it may theoretically be doable for an attacker to derive future keys from a previous compromised key.
However Surfshark instructed me by way of e-mail that with Dausos’ post-compromise safety, the brand new encryption keys are distinctive and fully unrelated to every other key, which makes it nearly inconceivable to decrypt future keys from a previous key compromise. Primarily, post-compromise safety provides Surfshark customers an added layer of privateness.
Dausos additionally incorporates post-quantum encryption, which might help shield in opposition to potential decryption threats from quantum computer systems sooner or later. Very like ExpressVPN, Surfshark’s hybrid post-quantum method helps shield consumer knowledge concurrently from immediately’s threats in addition to future threats.
“We launched quite a few steps, a few of them by no means seen in any VPN protocol earlier than, to maximise the safety of our protocol,” Kaciulis mentioned in a press release.
To assist validate its claims, Surfshark commissioned German safety agency Cure53 to run an impartial audit of Dausos’ safety. Cure53’s supply code audit came about between February and March 2026 and centered on the related structure and cryptography of the Dausos protocol. The audit flagged eight findings throughout the Dausos protocol’s scope that Cure53 rated a medium severity or decrease — most of which Cure53 says Surfshark instantly addressed.
“With no findings rated at Vital or Excessive severity throughout the precise Dausos protocol itself, the audit outcomes mirror a steady and resilient platform,” Cure53’s audit abstract states. “The Surfshark group demonstrated a big dedication to safety by remediating nearly all of the findings instantly following the testing section.”
The Dausos protocol is at the moment solely out there on Surfshark’s MacOS VPN app. Nonetheless, Surfshark instructed me by way of e-mail that the group is actively working towards rolling out Dausos on different platforms “quickly,” however can not but share a selected timeline.
For extra info, try the VPN settings to allow for optimum privateness, why VPN jurisdiction is crucial on your privateness, the way to pace up your VPN connection and why VPNs cannot make you utterly nameless on-line.
