
Designing Access Controls
Make Decisions about Remote Access (VPN)
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 | User Type and Sophistication | 
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 | Which users are connecting to the network, and what level of expertise do | 
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 | they have? | 
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 | Although you can make a VPN available to whomever you choose, remote access | 
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 | is commonly reserved for members of your organization. (That is, you do not | 
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 | provide VPN connections for guest users.) Therefore, you can typically expect | 
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 | a certain degree of interaction with the users. | 
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 | However, members of your organization might have widely differing technical | 
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 | skills, and a VPN client can be complicated to set up. At the least, the user must | 
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 | specify the IP address of the VPN gateway and possibly a preshared key. For an | 
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 | IPsec or L2TP/IPsec VPN, the user might also need to create a security policy | 
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 | that matches the policy on the VPN gateway. Even the most sophisticated users | 
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 | will require you to inform them of the correct settings. A typical user will | 
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 | probably need detailed instructions for setting up the VPN client. | 
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 | Typical users might find a PPTP VPN connection slightly easier to set up than | 
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 | one that relies on IPsec. They will still need some  | 
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 | inform them of your VPN gateway’s IP  | 
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 | the default settings established through the Windows Network Connection | 
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 | Wizard. | 
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 | Setting up L2TP/IPsec, on the other hand, can be complicated by the fact that | 
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 | users must specify options for both IPsec and for L2TP. If you are using preshared | 
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 | keys for the IPsec authentication method, some users might not understand that | 
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 | they have to enter that preshared key and their Windows domain credentials. | 
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 | In the end, some find vendor VPN clients easier to use; others prefer the native | 
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 | clients included with their endpoints’ OS. Members of your IT staff should | 
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 | select a preferred VPN client. You may also want to ask users if they have any | 
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 | particular preferences. Some of them may have experience using a VPN and | 
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 | may be able to provide a user’s perspective. | 
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| N o t e | The ProCurve VPN Client offers an attractive alternative to instructing less | 
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 | technically savvy users in configuring an IPsec VPN connection. You can | 
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 | create a customized policy that already includes necessary settings and perhaps | 
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 | a preshared key. Then export that policy to the client’s setup  | 
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 | selected when each user installs the client. | 
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 | As for an authentication method, user type and sophistication do not greatly | 
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 | |
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 | affect the choice. Whether a digital certificate or preshared key (password) is | 
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 | easier for the user to configure depends on whether the user’s endpoint already | 
