Appliances Vs. Software

In today's market, security products such as SSL VPNs are often sold as appliances, a term used to connote 'black boxes' that function without requiring administrators to understand their internal workings. In theory, appliances thereby reduce the overhead costs of installing, configuring, and maintaining an IT system.

Although some isolation from the internal technology certainly exists when it comes to SSL VPN offerings in appliance form, most appliances consist of standard computers running SSL VPN software on (a hardened version of) a standard operating system. Therefore—from a security standpoint—there is no intrinsic advantage in implementing an SSL VPN with an appliance-based form factor over an SSL VPN product sold as software that can be installed on servers of the purchaser's choice.

Note

Other components may be present in SSL VPN appliances such as SSL Accelerators, Air Gap Switches, etc. These topics are covered in Chapter 4 and 5 of this book.

Practically...