VPN Types

The management center supports the following types of VPN connections:

• Remote Access VPNs on threat defense devices.

  Remote access VPNs are secure, encrypted connections, or tunnels, between remote users and your company’s private network. The connection consists of a VPN endpoint device, which is a workstation or mobile device with VPN client capabilities, and a VPN headend device, or secure gateway, at the edge of the corporate private network.

  Secure Firewall Threat Defense devices can be configured to support Remote Access VPNs over SSL or IPsec IKEv2 by the management center. Functioning as secure gateways in this capacity, they authenticate remote users, authorize access, and encrypt data to provide secure connections to your network. No other types of appliances, managed by the management center, support Remote Access VPN connections.

  Secure Firewall Threat Defense secure gateways support the Secure Client full tunnel client. This client is required to provide secure SSL IPsec IKEv2 connections for remote users. This client gives remote users the benefits of a client without the need for network administrators to install and configure clients on remote computers since it can be deployed to the client platform upon connectivity. It is the only client supported on endpoint devices.

• Site-to-site VPNs on threat defense devices.

  A site-to-site VPN connects networks in different geographic locations. You can create site-to-site IPsec connections between managed devices, and between managed devices and other Cisco or third-party peers that comply with all relevant standards. These peers can have any mix of inside and outside IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. Site-to-site tunnels are built using the Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) protocol suite and IKEv1 or IKEv2. After the VPN connection is established, the hosts behind the local gateway can connect to the hosts behind the remote gateway through the secure VPN tunnel.