* The importance of testing SSL VPN gear before you buy it
Last time this newsletter pointed out that it is important to test SSL VPN gear before you buy it.
That was in reference to how well the features the manufacturer says it has actually work, but there are more reasons, key among them is how the device really works on any given network.
For example, an SSL VPN gateway might say it supports Lotus Notes, but does it support the version being used on the test network? If getting it to work requires changing the configuration of the device, does that make other applications on the network fail?
This is one of the potential problems Network World SSL VPN tester Joel Snyder addressed at the recent Interop show in Las Vegas, his advice based on having tested equipment from 11 vendors. “Sometimes if you fiddle with an SSL VPN enough, you can get an application to work but that may break another application,” Snyder says.
The key is to make sure the application mix that is actually going to run on the VPN can be supported by the VPN all at once.
In the Network World tests he conducted, Snyder set up 16 application scenarios and generated about 1400 test cases among nine VPN clients for a pretty comprehensive set of results. Except, he says, that the published results might not apply to the particular mix of a given potential customer.
Also, a test failure for one person might be just a tolerable annoyance for another. So if a vendor’s SSL VPN device has trouble formatting forms in a given application, the forms may still be usable and the VPN box may still be a viable option. The key is to insist on testing a box first.
Next time: Snyder on endpoint security.
