Introduction
1: Introduction to SSL VPN
2: SSL VPN: The Business Case
3: How SSL VPNs Work Free Chapter
4: SSL VPN Security
5: Planning for an SSL VPN
6: Educating the User
7: Legacy Data Access
8: The Future of SSL VPN Technology
Appendix A: A Review of TCP, IP and Ports
Appendix B: SSL VPN Gateways
Index

Free Chapters:
Chapter 3:
How SSL VPNs Work [PDF]
How SSL VPNs Work [HTML]

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Chapter 2: SSL VPN: The Business Case
As alluded to in Chapter 1, the need to provide remote access to important electronic resources such as applications, files, and databases is not new. For several decades, businesses, governments, and organizations have realized that significant benefits could be achieved by delivering such access to various parties. These benefits include:

Improving work force productivity:

o    Employees and contractors can perform tasks even when not physically present in their usual work facilities.

o    People are often willing to work more hours if they are permitted to work from home.

o    Managers and administrators can respond faster to emergency conditions and may be willing to respond to less-critical events immediately rather than applying an "it can wait until tomorrow" attitude as they would if they had to return to work after retiring home at the conclusion of normal business hours.

Lowering costs:

o    Increased self-service capabilities for conducting business with outside parties such as suppliers and customers leads to lowers costs

o    In some business environments in which employees can work remotely on a regular basis (e.g., IT consulting), an organization that offers remote access can maintain less office space (and save money). Workspaces can be assigned to those employees actually in the facility on a particular day (for example, by implementing a 'hoteling' scheme).

o    Increased self-service capabilities for suppliers improve their efficiency, yielding better-negotiated service/product rates.

o    If remote access is used as part of business-continuity strategy, fewer seats may be necessary at disaster-recovery/business-continuity facilities than if all workers must work at the secondary site.