VPN Tips
Read these 5 VPN Tips tips to make your life smarter, better, faster and wiser. Each tip is approved by our Editors and created by expert writers so great we call them Gurus. LifeTips is the place to go when you need to know about Remote Access tips and hundreds of other topics.
Extranet-based VPNs
If your company has a close relationship with another organization, such as a partner company, supplier, or customer, it might make sense to link the networks of both organizations to allow for more efficient collaboration.
An extranet-based VPN securely connects two distinct LANs so that authenticated users in either LAN can access common or shared resources in each network. They are not overly complicated to setup and really are the best way for two organizations with their own secured virtual private networks to closely collaborate.
A Multi-platform VPN Solution
If your office uses multiple client platforms, such as Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, then you may be having trouble finding one vpn software selection to satisfy this variety of systems. OpenVPN, a freely available open source product, was designed with cross platform compatibility in mind and runs on Linux, Solaris, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Mac OS X, and Windows 2000/XP. It also supports the highest levels of encryption and is compatible with SSL VPN networks (that is, if you have an existing VPN network that uses IPSec, L2TP, or PPTP for encryption, you must either move the VPN over to SSL or you will not be able to use OpenVPN). Unfortunately, at the time of writing OpenVPN cannot act as a proxy for your web browser, so intranet pages served over your VPN will not automatically be visible when an IP tunnel with OpenVPN is open on your client system.
Firebox
One of the most important aspects of a secure VPN is the gateway itself. There are a myriad of VPN gateways available on the market, but only a couple that are really appropriate for the small or medium business.
Firebox, by WatchGuard Technologies and Citrix Systems, is reliable, efficient, and cost-effective for SMB VPNs and is well worth looking into as a solution to protect and run your virtual private network.
What is a VPN?
What is a VPN?
A vpn, or virtual private network, is a network that allows access to only authorized users. A large corporate VPN will feel like a mini-Internet to users logged into the network, containing web sites, email services and data access. The benefit to using a VPN instead of simply requiring users to log into internal, private web sites and data resources is that once a user is logged into the VPN he has been authorized to access all the resources in the VPN without having to log in to each specific, private site and resource individually.
If your organization has a large or quickly growing set of internal informational services, including internal company websites, email, database access, data access, remote access software, memos, webcasts, etc., then a VPN is the best and most efficient way to protect the data so that only authorized employees may gain access.
Remote Access and Security
Is remote access software a large security hole for my company? Not necessarily. Some remote access solutions do create security problems that are inexcusable for any company LAN. For instance, TightVNC requires that a port be open in the company firewall at all times. Most good commercial products should not be considered security problems. When deciding which pc remote access program to use in your company, make sure that it has: - Secure authentication, authorization, and access control - Encryption of all data transferred - Verbose audit logs Finally, all remote access connections in your company should occur only through a secured VPN, or virtual private network. If your company does not have one, good remote access software will still provide adequate encryption security.
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