Aventail

Today, virtual private networks (VPNs) are a business necessity. Telecommuters and road warriors both need remote access to resources behind your firewall. And while the chances of someone snagging your business data as it crosses the Internet may be small, they are greater than zero. For most businesses, at the end of the day, providing secure access to remote users is a no-brainer.

Aventail's SSL-based VPN technology gives remote users — employees, partners, customers — secure access to corporate applications over any Internet connection using a standard web browser. With 500 enterprise customers and half a million end users, Aventail is the recognized leader in the fast-growing SSL VPN market.

That rapid growth can be explained in three words: easy, effective, and affordable.

A VPN is a private network that uses public networks — most notably the Internet — to connect nodes and transport data without compromising security. Though VPNs come in many flavors, all use encryption and other security mechanisms to ensure that only authorized users can access the network and that data cannot be intercepted as it crosses the public wires — or, with increasing frequency, the wireless spectrum.

One such security mechanism is Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), a protocol for transmitting private documents over the Internet. Besides its use in VPNs, SSL — which uses a private key to encrypt data transferred over a network connection — is also widely used by web sites to receive confidential user information, such as credit card numbers. Because SSL is so much easier to install and to support than a traditional IPSec-based VPN, SSL VPNs are gaining ground rapidly on business networks.

Here are a few of the key reasons we've chosen to offer Aventail's SSL-based VPN technology to Xtelesis customers:

• No client to deploy. Eliminating the ongoing headache of configuring, managing, updating, and supporting clients across a highly distributed organization, Aventail's SSL-based VPN technology is easier, less expensive, and quicker to deploy than an IPSec VPN would be.
   
• Ubiquitous access. Aventail's clientless technology provides secure network access via any standard web browser — over any network and from any device. That might mean logging in from behind a firewall on another company's network, from a home PC or a hotel using a broadband connection, even from a wireless hotspot or a public kiosk.
   
• Secure access. Aventail helps reduce risk through a unique combination of SSL and proxy technologies, granular access control, and a single point of management to ensure that each user has access to precisely the right resources. Aventail technology ensures that vulnerabilities in the third-party computers and networks your users are using won't become risks for your business — making it even more secure than a traditional VPN tunnel.
   
• Cost-effective ease. Aventail SSL-based VPN technology is easy and cost-effective to deploy and use — with no clients to deploy, no end user configuration headaches, and no network or firewall modifications. That means fewer support calls and lower costs.

Xtelesis proudly installs solutions from Aventail. Learn more