Choosing Firewall And VPN
Informational guideline for firewall and VPN, end users when selecting virtual private network (VPN) devices, think first about your existing equipment. If you want to integrate your VPN with your Cisco router network or your Barracuda firewalls, for example, your choice is pretty easy. Adding on to to existing device, though, is not always wise. If your firewall or router is already bogged down with existing tasks, assigning VPN service to it will probably push it over the edge. Consider your management workload. If you plan to use the VPN for client-to-LAN as well as LAN-to-LAN encryption, the product’s ability to tunnel manage is thousands of VPN critical. Generally, we found that the software-only vendors, including Microsoft, Novell, Internet dynamics, AXENT and data fellows, offer a more limited feature set and less control than their hardware-based competitors.
As the concept of creating secure tunnels over the public network has evolved, there have been many different ideas about the best security technology for implementation. Most of the VPN technologies are difficult to implement, are difficult to implement or just plain won’t work in certain situations, and are equally as difficult to administer once they are in production. I have included a summary of VPN technologies in general, so that you can make informed decision about which VPN technology to implement for your situation. Networks are more critical to business success than ever before. They support critical applications and processes and provide a common infrastructure for converged data, voice, and video services. Cisco understands the security challenges that organizations face today, and empowers its customers to safely engage in business by providing them with best-in-class security solutions. Instead of providing only point products that set a base level of security, Cisco embeds security throughout the network and integrates security services in all of its products– heightening security and making it a transparent, scalable, and manageable aspect of the business infrastructure.