[Sussex] VPN attitudes

[Andy Smith]

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.
> 
> By VPNs I mean properly cryptographically secured VPNs using SSL or
> SSH.
> 
> If an Internet service (eg: webmail) allowed you to connect to it by
> setting up a VPN would you use it from work?

Yes, I already send the majority of my Internet traffic (both
work-related and not) through SSH (it's either SSH or tunnelled
through SSH).

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

No.  I wouldn't work in a place that did.  It's possible to have a
sensible published use of computng resources policy without going
completely overboard.

There is a risk with employees using VPNs.  There is a risk with
having employees.  Presumably you would not put surveillance at the
water cooler and in the toilets so I do not see why it would be
required to be able to snoop on all employee traffic on the network.
Perhaps you could expand wat what you are trying to get at here..

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

Most enterprises already make use of VPNs.  I don't know whether
your question means "could you, Andy Smith, set up this particular
service?" or if it means "could enterprises in general put their
essential services out on the Internet and connect to them via VPN?"

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

Sysadmin at a managed hosting company.

Cheers,
Andy
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