Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a communications network tunneled through another network, and dedicated for a specific network. One common application is secure communications through the public Internet, but a VPN need not have explicit security features, such as authentication or content encryption. VPNs, for example, can be used to separate the traffic of different user communities over an underlying network with strong security features. A VPN may have best-effort performance, or may have a defined Service Level Agreement (SLA) between the VPN customer and the VPN service provider. Generally, a VPN has a topology more complex than point-to-point. The distinguishing characteristic of VPNs are not security or performance, but that they overlay other network(s) to provide a certain functionality that is meaningful to a user community.

With the Virtual Private Network Security Assessment , Alkan Telecom reviews policies & procedures used to support and administer the VPN and assess the current configuration of the VPN and associated systems. During the review, our network security consultants work with system and network administrators to obtain necessary information to evaluate existing policy and procedure documentation, assess actual procedures in use for VPN support and administration, review the technical architecture of the VPN deployment, and identify issues in any of these areas. Furthermore, we also perform a technical assessment of the VPN configuration, which may include external and internal network scans, authentication and authorization testing, and system vulnerability testing. The report deliverables include an executive summary overview, a detailed technical report, and detailed testing results. There are many reasons to do a VPN security assessment, including:

• To secure your remote access to prevent hackers from using your VPN as a tunnel to your internal network
• To verify that you have end-to-end security and not just an encrypted tunnel
• To verify the security of both your SSL based VPN and your IPSec based VPN