A New Virtual Private Network for Today's Mobile World

Virtual private networks were a critical technology for turning the Internet into an important business tool. Today's VPNs establish secure connections between a remote user and a corporate or other network via the encryption of packets sent through the Internet, rather than an expensive private network. However, they traditionally have linked only a relatively few nodes that a company's IT department controls and configures. This is not adequate for the many organizations that now must let managers, employees, partners, suppliers, consultants, e-commerce customers, and others access networks from their own PCs, laptops, publicly available computers like those at airport kiosks, and even mobile devices, many not controlled by the organization.