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VPN - The Basics

One of the most important skills any computer user should have is the ability to use a virtual private network (VPN) to protect their privacy.

 Virtual Private Networks or VPN is a way for users to securely access a private network and share data remotely through public networks.

It works much like a firewall the difference being a firewall protects your data on your computer, whereas VPNs protect it online.

Although a VPN is a Wide Area Network, the front end has the same functionality, security, and appearance as it would on the private network.

The Internet for all its connectivity is unreliable and is still a digital jungle where hackers can easily steal sensitive information from the ill equipped when it comes to public networks, and this is where VPN comes in.

If you work remotely and need to access sensitive data on your company's private servers, doing so from an unsecured public network like a coffee shop WI-Fi hotspot could put that data, your company's business, and your job on the line.

VPNs are popular with organizations because they act as a means of securing sensitive data when connecting remote data centers.

These networks are also used by individuals because they use a combination of dedicated connections and encryption protocols to generate virtual P2P connections, even if someone did manage to get some of the transmitted data, they would be unable to access it due to the encryption.

VPN allows individuals to hide their physical location as the actual IP address is replaced by VPN provider allowing them to bypass content filters so it prevents tracking your location by the government filters.

If you want one of these secure connections it is easy to log into your private corporate network remotely without much effort.

You need to connect to the public internet through an ISP, then initiates a VPN connection with the company VPN server using client software. 

The client software on the server establishes the secure connection, grants the remote user access to the internal network and TPS reports.

Many security protocols have been developed as VPNs, each offering many differing levels of security and features. 

IPSec is a security protocol often used to secure Internet communications and can be used to operate in two modes.

The transport mode only encrypts the data packet message itself while the tunneling mode encrypts the entire data packet and it can also be used in with other protocols in order to increase their combined level of security.

The L2TP and IPsec protocols are a mixture of both that include the best features available to create a highly secure VPN client.

Since it is not capable of encryption, it instead generates the tunnel while the IPSec protocol deals with encryption, channel security, and data integrity checks to ensure all of the packets have arrived and that the channel has not been compromised.

 Secure Socket Layer is used in the security of online retailers and service providers and they operate using a handshake method.

A HTTP-based SSL connection is started by the client using a URL that begins with https:// instead of with http://.

At the beginning of the process, an SSL handshake is done and this produces the cryptography parameters of the session.

These parameters that include digital certificates, are the ways by which the two systems exchange encryption keys, authenticate the session, and create the secure connection for the user.

 The Point to Point Tunneling Protocol  is a ubiquitous VPN protocol used since the mid 1990s and can be installed on a huge variety of operating systems and has been present for a long time.

PPTP is not about encryption, it simply tunnels and sends the data packet with a secondary protocol has to be used as well to handle the encryption.

While the level of security PPTP is not comparable to the new methods, the protocol remains a strong one, but not the most secure.

Secure Shell makes both the VPN tunnel and the encryption that protects it allowing users to transfer information unsecured data by routing the traffic from remote file servers through an encrypted channel.

The data itself is not encrypted but the channel its moving through and connections are created by the SSH client, which forwards traffic from a local port one on the remote server with data between the two ends of the tunnel flow through these specified ports.

These SSH tunnels are the primary means of getting past the government content filters so if the filter prevents access to TCP port 80, which handles HTTP, then you will find that all user access to the Internet is cut off.

However, the user can forward traffic from port 80 to another on the local machine which will still connect to the remote server's port 80 as long as the remote server allows outgoing connections, the bypass will work.

It also allows protocols that would otherwise be blocked by the firewall, to get past the wall by covering themselves in the skin of a protocol that the firewall does allow.


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