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A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a communication network that is normally used within a company or between companies and organizations to communicate and exchange private data. The communication is held over a public network such as the Internet. Participants of a VPN can exchange data just like in a LAN. The VPN connection is usually encrypted, since the public network is less trustworthy than the internal network.
How does it function?
The communication in a VPN usually involves a VPN Service Provider (server) and a VPN customer (client). Generally, a firewall sits between the remote user's workstation or client and the host network or server. Connecting to a VPN server involves the following steps:
- The user's client establishes the communication with the firewall
- The client may pass authentication data to an authentication service
- Upon successful authentication users are classified as known trusted persons and are provided with security privileges in order to access resources not available to general users (e.g. translation memories or term bases).
For more security, many VPN client programs can be configured so that all data traffic must pass through the firewall while the VPN connection is active. This is particularly useful when working in high-security environments such as research institutes or governmental institutions.
VPN client software
Some of the VPN client software that can be downloaded for free from the Internet are OpenVPN (http://openvpn.net/) and Cisco VPN (https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/index.html).
Why is this information important for translators and translation teachers?
Network and data security and privacy have become important issues in recent years and will become even more important in the future and many companies try to implement security strategies to protect their data against unauthorized access. VPN is one of the most advanced techniques in this field and has recently been adopted by a great number of industries, companies, official institutions, education centres. In future, when working for one of these translators and translation teachers may be confronted with technologies like VPN so it is good to know how they work.