4 ms·

But why are they not using VPN?

by CodeGlitch 5y ago

hanselot 5y ago
For the same reason docker exists. Convenience and lack of understanding.
ianai 5y ago
Probably because they’re on a mobile device or essentially monitoring 24/7 would be my guess.
raesene9 5y ago
common reasons could be :- - Cost, VPNs and the hardware to run them can be expensive - Single point of failure. If you run all your remote access through a VPN gateway then you run the risk of disruption if it goes down. Of course you can implement redundnt/multiple gateways but that increases cost. - Complexity for B2B setups. If you're exposing an API and you want third party services to access it, it can be more complex if there's a VPN involved. All that said, I still wouldn't run something like this (or indeed most services) directly on the Internet as it's a single vuln. away from problems, however I've seen plenty of services directly visible on the Internet for these reasons. You can spelunk around one of the search engines like Shodan or Censys to get an idea of how many people run application services directly on the Internet.
- deadbunny 5y ago
  A pair of openvpn servers will run you about $100/month in AWS. Sure there is some overhead in running them but not anything more than any other server. Maybe I'm just a jaded Sysop but this stuff is networking 101.
  - raesene9 5y ago
    Sure and if you're on AWS you can use their managed offerings. There's a variety of ways of solving it, but it depends on people seeing it as an issue to be solved. I think, unfortunately, what a lot of people take away from "zero trust networks" as a concept is get rid of all bastions/VPNs and firewalls, but that ultimately leads to the topic of this article...
- mbesto 5y ago
  If all of these are reasons, then you should use the cloud version. In other words, if your project management solution needs to be hosted for some business reason and you can't afford all of the maintenance required to host it properly, then you aren't charging enough for your product.
fnord77 5y ago
our VPN is a PITA to connect to. being connected all the time sucks for zoom meetings as the vpn server is on the other side of the continent. I love having access to most of my work tools outside the vpn - github, confluence, jira, aws console.
chrisseaton 5y ago
Some people think VPNs are harmful - see the Google BeyondCorp model.
Closi 5y ago
As well as all the other great reasons listed, you might not want users to have a VPN if for instance they are an external user (e.g. if your client's documentation is on your confluence instance and you want to give them access, it might be a giant pain and bad customer experience to force them to sign into your VPN in order to get access to their documentation).

But why are they not using VPN?

hanselot 5y ago

For the same reason docker exists. Convenience and lack of understanding.

ianai 5y ago

Probably because they’re on a mobile device or essentially monitoring 24/7 would be my guess.

raesene9 5y ago

common reasons could be :- - Cost, VPNs and the hardware to run them can be expensive - Single point of failure. If you run all your remote access through a VPN gateway then you run the risk of disruption if it goes down. Of course you can implement redundnt/multiple gateways but that increases cost. - Complexity for B2B setups. If you're exposing an API and you want third party services to access it, it can be more complex if there's a VPN involved. All that said, I still wouldn't run something like this (or indeed most services) directly on the Internet as it's a single vuln. away from problems, however I've seen plenty of services directly visible on the Internet for these reasons. You can spelunk around one of the search engines like Shodan or Censys to get an idea of how many people run application services directly on the Internet.

deadbunny 5y ago
A pair of openvpn servers will run you about $100/month in AWS. Sure there is some overhead in running them but not anything more than any other server. Maybe I'm just a jaded Sysop but this stuff is networking 101.
- raesene9 5y ago
  Sure and if you're on AWS you can use their managed offerings. There's a variety of ways of solving it, but it depends on people seeing it as an issue to be solved. I think, unfortunately, what a lot of people take away from "zero trust networks" as a concept is get rid of all bastions/VPNs and firewalls, but that ultimately leads to the topic of this article...
mbesto 5y ago
If all of these are reasons, then you should use the cloud version. In other words, if your project management solution needs to be hosted for some business reason and you can't afford all of the maintenance required to host it properly, then you aren't charging enough for your product.

fnord77 5y ago

our VPN is a PITA to connect to. being connected all the time sucks for zoom meetings as the vpn server is on the other side of the continent. I love having access to most of my work tools outside the vpn - github, confluence, jira, aws console.

chrisseaton 5y ago

Some people think VPNs are harmful - see the Google BeyondCorp model.

Closi 5y ago

As well as all the other great reasons listed, you might not want users to have a VPN if for instance they are an external user (e.g. if your client's documentation is on your confluence instance and you want to give them access, it might be a giant pain and bad customer experience to force them to sign into your VPN in order to get access to their documentation).