Week 5 - Virtual Private Networks

 As network technologies and methods are connectivity have changed, so have some of the means of security encryption. When it comes to encryption, 2 methods are possible. There are direct and interconnection options and there are VPNs. Direct connection options are more secure but are expensive, and the features heavily depend on the CSP being used. VPNs however, provide a much easier method that is inexpensive. 

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), establish a connection between the device and the internet and change the routing of the internet traffic by pushing it through an encrypted to increase privacy and security. One of the main use cases of VPNs is that they can help bypass firewalls and unblock geographical restrictions within certain areas. For example, if someone from a country has a specific website blocked off by their government. VPNs would allow them to listen to a song on YouTube even if their country block is by using a VPN. VPNs have different uses and implementations. Organizations that use cloud resources may rely upon VPNs to give remote workers, traveling salespeople, and contract partners access to their on-demand resources. This makes productivity and workflow options a bit more versatile. 

There are different options when it comes to establishing VPN endpoints. For example, the remote workers having access to VPN cloud resources are called Client VPN by AWS> When VPNs use primary connections between the on-prem data center and their cloud-based VPC. This solution is called Site-to-site VPN. 

Now with cloud-based VPN services, there needs to be a VPN endpoint configured on the VPC. In order for the VPN to be used, there needs to be a VPN client application installed. By doing this, it allows for the connection to be established and the provider will typically charge based on the connection hours of the VPN server. The VPN also automatically scales as necessary.  

As you can see, VPNs can be quite useful to cloud services. It can increase flexibility in the workflow for organizations that need to establish security and encryption endpoints. The solution also isn’t as expensive and doesn’t have strong limitations.