VPNs: don’t forget the hardware
I had several conversations over the summer with people who keep talking as if “VPN” is a thing you watch home TV over while you’re globetrotting. They are, like most of us, really not sure what the ongoing pandemic will mean for this technology or indeed their globetrotting habit, and the idea that bigger businesses might be conducting themselves almost entirely via VPN is a shock to them. They can’t figure out how the corporates keep their laptops nicely configured and up to date while watching Netflix. The combination of OS security patches and updates in pure VPN software clients just seems completely implausible to them.
I like to point them to developments in the hardware world when it comes to VPN support. In essence, you can run a VPN endpoint on the smallest CPU you can find, with a bit of proper firmware support and a sensible approach. I’ve been struck by how easy it is to set up VPNs using Zyxel ZyWalls, whether you make use of their centralised management or not. Pushing the VPN job down to a dedicated hardware box is a neat way of connecting from a mix of machinery that might not always have the same or the right release of a pure software client: I’ve long thought that a home firewall and a MiFi device with VPN capability would be easier to live with than a loose posse of tablets, phones and laptops.
No doubt other firewall makers will start crying foul play. However, Zyxel’s emphasis is the hardcore data centre guys, who view ease of setup as a primary reason not to buy a particular platform. The security business still needs a few more months of pandemic before it realises that the idea in this new era is that being helpful actually works.