Dave Wreski, CEO of Guardian Digital, says "Guardian Digital customers implement IPsec VPNs for connecting their branch offices and critical internal systems and SSL VPNs as an option for mobile users." Wreski is the author of much of the authoritative documentation on Linux security.
"The ease of configuration of SSL and browser ubiquity provide a nice way to quickly connect and access internal resources, while traditional IPsec VPNs provide robust transport security," he says.
Since the majority of IPsec VPN solutions require third-party hardware and software, they can be costly to maintain due to licensing of the client software. There are also the added burdens of installation and configuration of the client software on all remote machines. But the cost of SSL can also be a factor, especially when you consider porting applications to HTTP and training users on items such as good password management and remembering to close connections.
