Book Image

OpenVPN: Building and Integrating Virtual Private Networks

Book Image

OpenVPN: Building and Integrating Virtual Private Networks

Overview of this book

OpenVPN is a powerful, open source SSL VPN application. It can secure site-to-site connections, WiFi and enterprise-scale remote connections. While being a full-featured VPN solution, OpenVPN is easy to use and does not suffer from the complexity that characterizes other IPSec VPN implementations. It uses the secure and stable TLS/SSL mechanisms for authentication and encryption. This book is an easy introduction to this popular VPN application. After introducing the basics of security and VPN, the book moves on to cover using OpenVPN, from installing it on various platforms, through configuring basic tunnels, to more advanced features, such as using the application with firewalls, routers, proxy servers, and OpenVPN scripting. While providing only necessary theoretical background, the book takes a practical approach, presenting plenty of examples.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
OpenVPN
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface
Index

Certificate Management and Security


I think it's quite obvious that a computer that is used to sign certificates and keys granting or restricting access to a company's network will deserve special focus for everybody interested in accessing this network. My recommendation for a certificate server is to disconnect it from the network. Transfer keys and certificates with USB sticks or other non-network-media.

This advice has been published before very often because it is simply reasonable and true.

However, anybody who really does separate a certificate server computer from the local net and does not control the network of a secret service like a bank or similar infrastructure may send me an email. Most people simply wouldn't. In reality, certificate servers are merely programs running as a background job or as an application run by a non-privileged user. They say there are even Windows machines out there that do certificate management!

Nevertheless, there are some really cool and very reliable...