Many of you have heard of this technology term “VPN”, but what does it mean?  In a day of age now where more employees are working from home, understanding VPN’s and how they work is important for many businesses.

VPN Definition:

A Virtual Private Network, or VPN is a set of technologies which are used to link computers to create a private network. Another network is used to carry the data, which is encrypted. The carrier network will see the packets of data which it routes. To the users of the VPN, it will look like the computers were directly connected to each other.

The VPN model can guarantee the following:

• Confidentiality: The carrier network will route the data, but it will be unable to decrypt it.
• Sender authentication: People need to authenticate themselves, to be able to use the network.
• Message integrity: Messages transported across the network cannot be changed easily while they are in transport. When a message was changed, it is possible to detect this.

VPN Types:

There are two main types of VPN in popular use today:

IPsec VPN: IPsec is a set of protocols for security at the packet processing layer of network communication. An advantage of IPsec is that security arrangements can be handled without requiring changes to individual user computers.  IPsec provides two choices of security service: Authentication Header (AH), which essentially allows authentication of the sender of data, and Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP), which supports both authentication of the sender and encryption of data as well. The specific information associated with each of these services is inserted into the packet in a header that follows the IP packet header.

SSL VPN: Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is a protocol for managing the security of a message transmission on the Internet, usually by HTTPS. SSL uses a program layer located between the Internet’s Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Transport Control Protocol (TCP) layers. SSL uses the public-and-private key encryption system from RSA, which also includes the use of a digital certificate. An SSL VPN uses SSL to secure the VPN tunnel.

• Kazmarek Technologies Solutions is a SonicWall technology partner.
• SonicWall is one of the world’s leading providers of firewalls and VPN technology to small and medium sized businesses globally.