RE: VPN access

There was a hacking incident recently with our bank.

We post money to a special bank account to pay quarterly taxes.
We send a form to the state showing our math basis of what the tax is.
Then the bank withdraws from the account based on our form's data.

A hacker withdrew the funds from that special account, so that when the state went to do the withdrawal, the account was empty. The state wanted us to put the money into the account again, but this was not acceptable to our company. Fortunately the bank made good to the state.

I wonder how often this kind of thing happens, whether it was the bank or the state that got hacked. Our PC, that accesses the bank, is not connected to our 400. The operator of that PC is on medical leave & I am helping out. I am astounded by the volume of spam she gets (maybe 10 a day) ... I mentioned this to our network guru who said "Al, everyone gets spam. Get over it." Well thanks to KNUJON, my spam at home is down to maybe 1 a day, and at the office maybe 1 a week. Spam is one way for hackers to get connected.

Al Macintyre
i/geek

Thanks everyone.

It seems the consensus is yes, you can run without the VPN using just SSL
(assuming our Seagull product handles that and I'm pretty sure that it
does). So the issue is really price vs extra security? What extra security
do we get with the VPN? Again, the argument I'm getting is that banks don't
use VPN's - why do we need to?

I thought I read somewhere that with the VPN you can get to your network,
but with only SSL you can not access the network. Is there any truth to this
or did I misinterpret the article?

Ron

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Aaron Abreu
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2008 1:52 PM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: VPN access

before we had VPN we simply used our
PowerTerm software to emulate 5250 from
our home computers and then relyed on
400 security to control who could get into the
system.

so yes, if you have a client emulater that everyone
could intall, then you could run withou VPN, but what
is the "security risk" factor. VPN is all about a secure
link before you allow someone to even touch your 400.

can you put a price on that??
Aaron



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Bay District Schools
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