Too small?
Although outsourcing is generally targeted at large enterprises--and the telcos certainly focus their managed VPN services at the bigger end of town--there is a great deal of room for small businesses to take advantage.
"For small enterprises, it's very hard to attract a genuine expert who understands all these issues in the first place, and then it's even harder being able to afford and retain their services," says Panadeer's Hampel.
"Outsourced managed VPNs are the real hunger we're seeing in the SME marketplace, because SMEs just can't do it all. These organisations might have one or two IT professionals and no one specialised in communications."
However, many businesses aren't aware these services are even available.
"There's an education process; no-one calls us," says Hampel. "We find confused CEOs and CFOs so focused on running their business and frustrated because they're not taking advantage of deregulation."
They feel they're getting ripped off by Telstra because they haven't seen any price reductions. They haven't got anyone advising them of new technologies and new capabilities. It's very much a question of showing them the art of the possible and that it needn't cost them that much."
How to buy, how to configure
We asked security consultant Jan Zeilinga of First Point Global what are the most important things to look for when buying and configuring VPN appliances.
Things to look for:
- Does it plug straight into your link, or will you need a router as well?
- What is the encryption strength? (No point if it's just 56bit DES, Triple DES is pretty much a minimum.)
- Authentication methods--can it tie into your existing password systems?
- Filtering/firewall capability. (Sure the users have authenticated, but do you really trust them?)
- Does it provide useful audit logs?
- Will users require special client software?
- How many users and how much bandwidth can it handle?
- Cost, both for the server and any client software.
- Ease of use--for admins and users.
Configuring your appliance:
