[Sussex] VPN attitudes

[Alan Pope]

On Sat, Aug 26, 2006 at 09:15:39PM +0100, Nic James Ferrier wrote:
> I'd like to do a quick survey about attitudes to VPNs with those of
> you who have some involvment in corporate LANs.
> 

My "involvement" is as a user of corporate LANs.

> If an Internet service (eg: webmail) allowed you to connect to it by
> setting up a VPN would you use it from work?
> 

Probably not, no. For two reasons, I already have access to numerous email
accounts on mine and other machines which I access either directly using SSH
or using HTTPS. I have also in the past had to SSH on port 443 to bypass a
nazi proxy server at one customers corporate LAN.

> Do the security policies at your place of work prevent setting up
> arbitary VPNs?
> 

Depends. I work on a number of sites. Some do, some don't. My current
customer lets pretty much unfettered anything out. My previous customer
blocked everything and provided a proxy for port 80 and 443.

> Could you build an important enterprise tool (like an email system)
> based on a VPN?
> 

GoToMeeting (a.k.a. Citrix) don't seem to do badly :) Although I'm not sure
if all their services fall into the VPN category.

> If you do reply please tell me a little bit about the area in which
> you work. 
> 

I am an IT consultant specialising in SAP technology products "SAP Netweaver".

Cheers,
Al.