Chapter 9. Firewall and VPN Load Balancing

Without a doubt, the need to protect digital information from unauthorized access has become a necessary and integral part of any organization in business today. Threats from external, as well as internal attacks are an ever-present reminder of just how vulnerable we are. Not withstanding this, the reliance on the digital medium continues to increase, and therefore our requirement for protection rises in parallel. There are virtually no key elements within society today that are not computerized. The more we computerize our mission-critical processes and services, the more vulnerable we become. While it is not all doom and gloom, it is important to understand that security is typically a number-one agenda item on a CIO's technology list.

Many different products on the market today can (and in some cases cannot) effectively provide network security. The overlying factor, however, is that the more secure you want your network to be, the more latency you will incur. In addition, access in to and out of your network by traveling and remote or tele-working employees is becoming an absolute requirement. Using the Internet, which has global reach and is extremely affordable, to connect to your network makes a lot of sense. The major issue here is that corporate or private information is being transported over a public network. The solution is to create a VPN between the user and the internal network. To further increase the security, encryption is used to protect sensitive data.

Therefore, by protecting your site from external threats while simultaneously allowing users to access your network over a public network, a comprehensive security installation is key. However, as the company grows and access speeds increase, the pressure on those security devices is increased, as users demand more speed and less latency. To overcome this load balancing of these devices to provide security acceleration is an extremely cost effective and scalable solution.