Choosing Secure Remote Access Technologies

by Bollinger, Jeffrey B.

This study proposes the need for secure remote communications to protect the data and information infrastructure of an organization. Several common remote access technologies are discussed, along with their various flaws and strengths. End-to-end encrypted VPN tunnels appear to be the most secure method of remote network access, and are discussed in terms of their performance and implementation details.

A performance test for a VPN tunnel was performed to highlight the differences in network latency and throughput when additional levels of security are added. Cryptographic functions like hashing and Perfect Forward Secrecy are discussed and compared along with different cryptographic algorithms like DES and 3DES. Ultimately, the differences in performance between cryptographic configurations are slight, though could be amplified by network conditions.