Remote Access

With the rise of tele-working, hotdesking, mobile computing, and day-extenders, office-bound employees are fast dwindling in number. The result is an explosion in solutions that can deliver to remote workers access to the company network resources at anytime and from anywhere in the world.

And we're not talking about traditional connectivity options, such as dial-up links to modem banks and WANs that ride over private (and expensive) leased lines. The leading technologies today, experts agree, are VPNs that leverage one of two protocols: IP-Sec or SSL.

IP-Sec

IP-Sec is ideal for facilitating site-to-site communications between branch offices. The technology transmits applications as packets using TCP/IP in tunnel mode (for fixed endpoints) or transport mode (for mobile endpoints) at the network layer of the IP stack. IP-Sec thereby connects users outside a corporate firewall or gateway to internal corporate assets and applications. IP-Sec is perfect for branch-office staff, plus remote IT managers and power users that need on-demand access to all resources linked to the corporate LAN. It works well; its security is robust and though it may necessitate creating a tunnel via the Web to navigate from server to client, its security is as good as that of a client terminal sitting right next to the server, because the application software sits on the client.

However, IP-Sec has special administration requirements. Users need compatible hardware or software at both ends of the tunnel and you may also have to install, configure, and maintain VPN client software on each PC or notebook, which could be a cumbersome proposition if the VPN is to serve hundreds or thousands of users.

SSL VPN

SSL VPN removes one major hassle of the IP Sec method - it's `clientless', meaning that all the software of the virtual private network (VPN) resides at the or server end. For many common applications, SSL-based VPNs can adequately serve a broad spectrum of remote and mobile workers. SSL VPNs use SSL and proxies at the application layer of the IP stack to give end users secure access to Web applications, client-server apps, and file-sharing resources. And, because SSL is included in standard Web browsers, SSL VPNs offer clientless access.

But SSL VPN solutions have their own caveats as many products in this space provide access only to Web-enabled applications, excluding legacy, client-server, specialty, or back-office apps, such as Oracle or SAP ERP databases.

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