Security+: Technologies And Tools – VPN Concentrators

Introduction

In the world of Cybersecurity today, there are of course many options that can be used to help secure network connections. This of prime importance for any business or corporation, as the probability that they will have remote employees is quite high. With this, there must be assurances that whatever shared resources, corporate information, and data, etc. that is transmitted back and forth is safe and secure and cannot be easily hijacked by a malicious third party.

This is where the role of the Virtual Private Network comes into play. A VPN can be specifically defined as follows:

“A virtual private network gives you online privacy and anonymity by creating a private network from a public Internet connection. VPNs mask your Internet protocol (IP) address, so your online actions are virtually untraceable. Most important, VPN services establish secure and encrypted connections, guaranteed to provide greater privacy than even a secured Wi-Fi hotspot.” (SOURCE: 1).

It is important to note that this definition assumes just a one-way connection has been established. For example, this would be from where the remote employee is working to where the physical location of the corporate server, and vice versa. However multiple VPN connections must be made, and this is where the role of the “VPN Concentrator” comes into play.

The VPN Concentrator

The VPN Concentrator can also be defined as follows:

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“A VPN concentrator is a type of networking device that provides secure creation of VPN connections and delivery of messages between VPN nodes. It is a type of router device, built specifically for creating and managing VPN communication infrastructures.” (SOURCE: 2). Thus, as one can see, this sort of device is not meant to be used for just a few VPN connections; rather, it is meant to be used for many, (Read more...)