IPSec VPN Vs. Open VPN - Security Risks - Pros & Cons

A user can configure VPN using various protocols that are available as of today. As there are few options out there for VPN configuration, the question of pros and cons as well as the efficiency of these protocols arises. When a lot of technical jargon is used to describe these protocols, it becomes difficult for a normal user to choose the correct one.

OpenVPN

It was first released 17 years ago i.e is on 13th May 2017. It uses the open-source OpenSSL library for encryption. So all the cyphers available in OpenSSL library is utilised by OpenVPN. When it comes to authentication, a pre-shared secret key, certificate or username password can be used. When it comes to configuration, OpenVPN is very flexible as it can be configured on any port, even 443. So OpenVPN traffic becomes very difficult to be distinguished from the usual HTTPS traffic.

Pros and Cons of OpenVPN

IPsec VPN

IPsec or Internet Protocol Security is an end to end protocol that works on the Network layer of the OSI model. This protocol was developed to work with IPv4 as when initially developed, IPv4 was with minimum security. IPsec can protect data that flows between two computers or hosts, two networks or even a network and host. IPsec can operate in two modes:

• IPsec tunnel mode: In this mode, the entire data that is transmitted is encrypted or secured with updated header and ESP (Encapsulating Security Protocol) trailer.
• IPsec transport mode: The only difference between tunnel and transport mode is that with transport not all the data is encrypted but only the payload and ESP trailer were encrypted.

Pros and Cons of  IPsec VPN

Conclusion

The choice of protocol always depends on the use case. For a normal user, OpenVPN can prove beneficial as it has better speed, it’s very difficult to block the VPN connection and it is easy to setup even though a third party application is required. When a user is looking for stronger encryption, IPsec should be opted because, with correct configuration, IPsec can offer the best possible encryption.

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