Professional Documents
Culture Documents
VPNs: a Comparison
Author
Sean Jordan and Anthony Jackson are the primary authors of
this paper. 3am Labs have developed the technology used by
LogMeIn.
Abstract
This paper provides a comparison of how LogMeIn and IPSec
VPNs provide corporate LAN access to remote workers.
LogMeIn is a web-based remote access solution based on
technology pioneered in 3am Labs’ enterprise product,
RemotelyAnywhere. Its primary role is to allow end users to
access their home or office computers from a remote location
over the internet in a simple and secure manner.
white papers
LogMeIn vs. IPSec VPNs White Paper
Introduction
Who has remote access to your company’s IT system? If you think you know the answer,
think again. In today’s fast-changing mobile workplace, an IT administrator’s control
over a company’s IT system is not always assured, and is often hampered by the needs of
employees to access company network resources—including email, databases, and
mission-critical software—24 hours a day, 7 days a week. To stay efficient and
competitive, employees also often need access to such resources while at home or on the
road.
How do you ensure that employees have the remote access they need, while maintaining
the security protocols (firewalls, etc.) that keep intruders from gaining entry into your
company’s IT system?
IPSec Virtual Private Networks (IPSec VPNs) are not the answer. While they are
indispensable in what they are designed for, namely the linking of corporate networks,
and work seamlessly once set up, IPSec VPNs are cumbersome to configure and
expensive to maintain. In addition, there is a huge security risk in moving the corporate
security perimeter out to laptops, home offices, and customer sites.
LogMeIn is the simple, secure way to provide your company’s employees with remote
access to your company’s network resources without compromising network security.
VPNs have long been the standard tool used to provide mobile workers with remote
access to their companies’ network resources. A VPN ensures network security by
encrypting all data transfers between predetermined endpoints, even when such data is
channeled through a public network. While VPNs represent a viable option for remote
access, their inflexible setup requirements, which include the necessity of restricting
encrypted traffic to designated IP addresses, poses some problems.
LogMeIn is the secure and simple way to provide employees with quick remote access to
corporate network resources. With LogMeIn, no client-side software is needed, and all
data transferred is secured by 128- to 256-bit encryption.
One corollary of the foregoing is that LogMeIn users working remotely require a
computer that they may access at work. In many cases, however, it is more cost-effective
to provide remote users with this access, rather than set up a VPN.
Configuration
Every installation of VPN client software requires special configuration. LogMeIn,
meanwhile, auto-configures; with web-based administration and no firewall or router
concerns, all that’s required is installation of the software on host machines. Users need
only remember their email address and passwords, and keep track of any extra optional
security options they implement with their installation.
Firewalls
LogMeIn establishes a connection with the client computer via an outgoing SSL-secured
TCP connection, meaning that no firewall configuration is required. VPNs, on the other
hand, require the activation of port forwarding on the corporate network firewall or
router.
Capacity
LogMeIn transmits the image of the host screen to the remote computer – meaning
applications run as per normal, with no loss of performance on within the corporate
LAN. While using a VPN, the software on the remote computer is tightly integrated with
the network via a much slower connection. This can lead to a severe hit on the software’s
performance if the application needs to work with larger amounts of data.
For host management, LogMeIn offers a network solution called the LogMeIn Scout.
This allows for easy deployment of LogMeIn hosts across a network, as well as automatic
scans of the network for any existing remote-access software. The Scout even allows the
system administrator to enable and disable the remote-access software that it finds.
Conclusion
VPNs have long been the standard tool used to provide mobile workers with remote
access to their companies’ network resources. A VPN ensures network security by
encrypting all data transfers between predetermined endpoints, even when such data is
channeled through a public network. While VPNs represent a viable option for remote
access, their inflexible setup requirements, which include the necessity of restricting
encrypted traffic to designated IP addresses, pose great problems. Genuinely secure
VPNs are often only the result of a great amount of work, routine maintenance, and
vigilance on the part of the system administrator.
LogMeIn is the secure and simple way to provide employees with quick remote access to
corporate network resources. Built from the ground up to seamlessly integrate with and
complement existing Windows security structures, it provides fast and easy access to the
corporate LAN without enlarging its security perimeter. Finally, with its easy
maintenance and anytime-anywhere technology, LogMeIn provides a very low total cost
of ownership.
_________________________________________