Virtual Private Network (VPN) Question: Download VPN PDF
What kind of policies and procedures need to be developed for VPN?
Answer:
If we are imaging an IPSEC world, where eventually the majority of gateways we might connect to supports IPSEC, things become both easy and interesting. If we have a mechanism that can invite encryption use, respond to such invitations, but also talk without encryption if required, we need to think about things such as:
► What risk are we under from eavesdroppers?
► Do we always want to talk encrypted if we can?
► What are the list of sites or networks with whom we must talk encrypted?
► If we cannot talk encrypted to those "must encrypt" sites, what do you want the fall back to be?
► What if we're invited to talk encrypted, but using weak crypto (answer this question both for the general case as well as for the "must encrypt" set of networks)?
► How often do we change session keys?
► Do we need the ability to recover data or keys for encrypted sessions? (I'm arguing that this is almost a 100% "yes" if we were talking about file encryption, but almost 100% "no" for network communications.)
► Are we going to have the encryption be certificate-based? Who do we trust to be a Certification Authority?
► Will we allow encryption through the firewall or only up to the firewall?
► How do we protect the keys? Who has access to the keys?
► What risk are we under from eavesdroppers?
► Do we always want to talk encrypted if we can?
► What are the list of sites or networks with whom we must talk encrypted?
► If we cannot talk encrypted to those "must encrypt" sites, what do you want the fall back to be?
► What if we're invited to talk encrypted, but using weak crypto (answer this question both for the general case as well as for the "must encrypt" set of networks)?
► How often do we change session keys?
► Do we need the ability to recover data or keys for encrypted sessions? (I'm arguing that this is almost a 100% "yes" if we were talking about file encryption, but almost 100% "no" for network communications.)
► Are we going to have the encryption be certificate-based? Who do we trust to be a Certification Authority?
► Will we allow encryption through the firewall or only up to the firewall?
► How do we protect the keys? Who has access to the keys?