preview

Using A Virtual Private Network

Best Essays
Open Document

VPNs
By
Samantha Fitzpatrick
Prepared for
Dr. Ford
30 April 2015 Introduction There is a growing need to connect to internal networks from locations other than the regular and secure office. Employers and organizations need to realize that employees often need to connect to internal private networks from home, hotels, airports, etc. A solution for this problem is using a virtual private network (VPN), which is a network that uses public network paths, but maintains the security and protection of private networks. Secure communication is expensive, but VPNs allow organizations to have a number of discrete communication services for a large amount of clients. It is cheaper to have a copious amount of virtual networks on a couple physical devices than having a copious amount of physically discrete devices accomplishing the same objective.
Methodology
VPNs transmit data through secure tunneling. A packet is first encapsulated in a new packet with a new header and then sent through the tunnel, which is normally IPSec, L2TP, PPTP, or SSL. Both points of the tunnel need to support the protocol used. To provide access to the internet, the packet with a private IP address can be sent inside of a packet with a global IP address. For security, VPNs use encryption to make sure packets are indecipherable without the proper keys, which provides data confidentiality. They also provide data integrity using a message digest to ensure the information has not been tampered with

Get Access