Chapter Summary

Security practices for end users tend to revolve around the authentication, authorization, and accounting functions. Although a device that is attached to a corporate LAN might be assumed to be secure, the users who use that device still need to be watched to make sure they are allowed to access services in the network.

Users who are connecting to an ISP also need to be authenticated before they are allowed to send packets into the Internet. The ISP wants to know whom the person is and if he has paid his bill to the ISP before allowing him to connect.

When an employee connects to the Internet from home, he runs the risk of exposing corporate secrets if he uses applications that run on servers in the corporate network. Curious or malicious people on the Internet can capture packets. To prevent someone from seeing sensative corporate data, corporate users can use VPNs to connect to the corporate network from home, which encrypts the data so that anyone who is capturing the packets can't read them.