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IPsec Clients

Much as you'd like to keep your sensitive enterprise data tucked safely behind closed doors, the fact is that users need to deal with the world outside your borders. For many companies, virtual private networks provide a secure way to do that -- if they're up to snuff. Microsoft Corp.'s IPsec implementation in Windows 2000 and Windows XP will be sufficient if you're going peer to peer, but if you have to connect to VPN gateways that don't support Microsoft's native client or support multiple-vendor VPN gateways, you'll need a third-party VPN client. We brought four such products -- F-Secure Corp.'s F-Secure VPN+, Microsoft's Windows XP, Network Associates' PGPvpn and SafeNet's SoftRemote -- into our Syracuse University Real-World Labs®. After months of testing, we gave our Editor's Choice award to PGPvpn, a solid product that's lacking a few bells and whistles but will keep your data secure without breaking the bank.