VPN (Virtual Private Network) is one of the most in demand technology that is facilitating secure data, traversing public networks such as Internet. The deployment of VPN’s has given many small to medium organizations a cost effective solution for remote access, which would have otherwise been one of the biggest growth barriers for technology dependent businesses. A VPN allows you to access your personal data or business systems via the Internet by creating a secure tunnel between two systems with the highest level of data encryption.

There are countless VPN technologies offered by a huge number of industry experts including Cisco, IBM, NetGear Inc and many others based on the type of VPN setup required or the type of data submission and one of the most popular solutions with businesses of all sizes is a Site to site IPSec VPN. Each VPN setup constitutes some important components including client software for users to connect remotely, dedicated hardware, VPN server and a Network access server.

Now a day’s businesses prefer to use industry class firewalls for their VPN solutions, such an example would be the Cisco ASA (Adaptive Security Appliances) manufactured by Cisco Systems Inc. The Cisco ASA has quite a reputation in the IT services industry and is known for its reliability and scalability. The ASA supports client based, site to site and SSL clientless VPN’s. The Cisco ASA also supports IPS/IDS modules, which can be purchased separately and installed in the expansions slots provided on the Cisco ASA’s.  The ASA’s predecessor the Cisco PIX 500 series is no longer in production but is still used by many businesses today.  Another popular industry class firewall manufacturer would be Juniper, their SSG firewall Series are extremely robust and are packed with features from VPN, IPS, antivirus (anti-spyware, anti-phishing, anti-adware), anti-spam, to Web filtering.  Although Juniper is a very young company being founded in 1996 they have made a real impact in the IT services market with their products, while offering businesses of all sizes a wide range of products and solutions.

When talking about firewalls and VPN’s it would be a great injustice not to talk about Checkpoint software technologies that are a pioneer in the way of firewalls and IT security products. Checkpoint is the preferred choice for many fortune 500 companies where securing the IT infrastructure is of upmost priority. Checkpoint provides products for SOHO, medium and large businesses, one of their most popular products would have to be the UTM-1 (Unified Threat Management) appliance series. The UTM-1 series has a lot of fire power with features such as Firewall, IPSec VPN, IPS, Application Control, Identity Awareness, Antivirus & Anti Malware, Anti-Spam & Email Security and URL Filtering Software Blades. With all these features is no wonder why Checkpoint firewalls are the preferred choice for large enterprises.

It’s never easy when trying to select the right firewall for your VPN solution, with so many products and service offering in the marketplace.