I wish I could say the same for the Mac. The Mac used to have a utility called “Internet Connect” which likewise set up a VPN connection in a few clicks. But now you have to go through the main Network Preferences control panel, whose strange interface (unique even to the Mac) is very complex and confusing and has gotten more so in “Snow Leopard.” (It’s a shame to see that the Mac is going backwards on ease of use and ease of learning.) I regularly help customers to set up Mac VPNs over the phone, though.

I argue that a well managed machine, use of HTTPS/SSL and common sense offer as much or more protection than many of the VPN solutions being discussed here. Don’t get me wrong, VPN can be a great thing, but often people assume that because they are using a VPN that they don’t need to worry about the other stuff.

Best,
Sebastian

In most cases, you’ll have the option of doing “split tunneling” (in which only certain traffic goes through the VPN) or complete tunneling (in which everything, even your browsing, goes through the VPN). The latter is a bit more secure, but so inefficient and slow that it probably isn’t worth it. (If you do anything on the Net that requires security, you will likely be using SSL/HTTPS anyway.)

The only problem you’ll find with VPNs is that some cellular providers (Alltel in particular) limit the lengths of all TCP sessions and will cut off a VPN connection after a certain amount of time. Thus, they can be awkward to use with datacards. But this does not tend to be an issue on public Wi-Fi networks.

1. VPN is using cryptography, so certified , vendor based products have strong advantage.

2. There is abig difference between SSL based VPNS and IPSEC based VPNs,
Unfortunately the differences are not that trivial for regular users.

3. Firewall traversal, NAT Traversal and “office mode” IP’s are important features that have been around foe years. If your VPN client works in one place, it does nor mean it will work in any place.
Moreover, you’ll be surprised when things strat working when you have overlapping IP’s without office private address space.

4. Unfortunately, most big vendors ( cisco,Check Point,Juniper, Microsoft ) have stopped investing development efforts in this area 5 years ago.It seems people don’t really care about encryption and SSL is “good enough” in most cases.

Using a the HotSpot Shield may protect you from other Wi-Fi users in that hotspot, but it does not protect your data the rest of the way across the Internet.

Nortel also provides easy to use VPN clients and gateways, for both IPSec and SSL VPNs, that will secure your data end-to-end.

Regards,
Jon

In the end, I don’t think that a solution like the Hotspot Shield offers me much extra protection.