This article is a part of the Working From Home series
Virtual Private Network
As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, businesses have had to be pro-active in ensuring the safety and health of their employees and their customers. Many have had to be creative in finding a workaround enabling their employees to be productive even if they’re quarantined. To do so many have been pushed towards working from home. A company can’t just do this without taking proper security measures and planning. If they don’t they leave themselves vulnerable to the threats to their network. Virtual Private Networks are an added layer of network security for companies to utilize. It is useful whether the office is operating at full capacity or folks are working from home. VPNs are especially useful for organizations that require employees to connect to the organizations local networks.
What is a VPN?
VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. It is a set of technologies that allows a device to connect through a protected tunnel to another network. This combination of technologies creates a secure connection between two endpoints that otherwise would not be able to communicate with each other. VPN’s are used by many organizations to provide remote access to protected resources. These could be customer relations resources, purchasing systems, a subscription article database, and a multitude of other resources.
VPNs allows for remote users to connect securely to systems that otherwise would not accessible from the outside. They facilitate access to a companies internal systems for users that are outside of that organizations local network. This is done by the VPN creating a private connection between two devices. There usually is some form of encryption on the tunnel between the two devices. Network traffic is then sent through this tunnel. These kind of protections are commonly used to connect satellite offices to a centralized office or data center.
Virtual Private Networks are also used to alter where network traffic appears to be coming from. If you are in one location and you connect to a VPN server then it will show you in that location. The point where your traffic exits to the internet will appear to be in that second location. It is useful to test how your site or service works for customers in a different location. This is just a few examples of the various tools and protocols used in setting up a VPN.
How Does a VPN Work?
IP networking allows information to flow between networks. Regular online activity works by information crossing from your local network to intermediate networks and so on to destination networks. If you need to access info on a protected network, then a different approach is needed. A protected network like a home or office network does not allow traffic from the internet to access devices on the network without there being an outgoing connection to the same host. This is due in part to firewall rules. To access these hosts the traffic needs to come from these protected networks. A connection must be set up between your device and the connected network. This creates a private network between two hosts, rather than a public network that anyone can join.
There are three main operating styles of VPNs. They are called routing, bridging, and encapsulation.
Routing is when network packets are sent from your computer to a remote system that is off of your network. The system uses a route to determine where to send those packets of data. Routes determine how packets flow to different networks. However, this works slightly different in practice. Think of this VPN as plugging in a network cable from a network adapter on your computer to the VPN server that you’re connecting to but across the internet.
Bridging behaves as though the devices are physically connected to the same network. It is as if the local networks and remote networks are bridged.
Encapsulation is the idea that information is wrapped up inside other information that can travel between networks. Network traffic that cannot travel between two networks gets wrapped in packets that can travel between networks. On a client system, traffic is sent to the local endpoint of the VPN tunnel. That traffic gets wrapped in a protocol that can be routed to another network. Packets are then sent through the tunnel. On the receiving end, VPN software running on the server will unwrap these packets and set them free on the remote sides of the local network. Any traffic coming back to the client is wrapped up by the server, sent through the tunnel, and unwrapped by the client.
Pros and Cons of VPNs
There are a multitude of benefits to using a VPN. First of all you are secure in this type of network security through a platform called IPSEC. Once your VPN is set up you can configure it and make adjustments through IPSEC. VPNs are also very cost effective. If it is software related, you will be spending next to nothing. Given that they are compatible with broadband technology, they work with pretty much any technology out there. Lastly, VPNs are scalable to whatever your needs are. As your company continues to grow, you can create as many VPNs as you wish to make.
Along with the benefits of VPNs, there are also a few downsides. VPNs can sometimes be confusing to non-technical users. This is due in fact that there can be too many VPNs. Leaving them confused as to which VPN to connect to and what login credentials to use. It can also be possible for dropped connections when it is idle. It can drop connection for seemingly no reason. VPNs can stress network resources, which causes bandwidth and connection issues. For this reason, VPNs must be monitored closely to ensure everything is working appropriately.
VPN Connection Types:
There are a multitude of ways that VPNs establish a secure connection between devices and networks.
Remote access VPN allows remote users to securely access internal network resources. Many IT companies are doing some form of this nowadays for their clients. It allows them to remotely dial into servers and switches to do troubleshooting things.
Site-to-site VPN is an intranet VPN. It connects remote sites to the network backbone securely. All of your companies have an internet connection. It is for that fact that it is more feasible to do a site-to site VPN to your branch offices than it is to actually acquire a PPP or a frame relay or something of that nature. It will cost you a lot of money as compared to doing site-to-site.
Extranet VPN provides limited connectivity to the internal network for organization suppliers, partners, and customers for business use. Examples of when this is needed is if you are merging with another company or you’re having a partner, supplier, or customer coming into your business to do work. It will limit the type of connection they have and set what they can and cannot access.
