Some of the business’s employees may travel and frequently need to access these resources from the road.
However, the business doesn’t want to expose their important resources to the public Internet.
Crucially, a VPN works more at the operating system level than the software level.
You don’t have to configure each individual utility.
Generally, SSH is used to securely acquire and use a remote terminal session – butSSH has other uses.
However, an SSH tunnel doesn’t offer all the benefits of a VPN.
Unlike with a VPN, you must configure each system to use the SSH tunnel’s proxy.
It’s considerably more difficult with an SSH tunnel.
For more information about SSH tunnels, seethis guide to creating an SSH tunnel on Windows with PuTTY.
Which Is More Secure?
There are other considerations, too.
For this reason, SSH tunnels have been dubbed a “poor man’s VPN.”
Businesses looking for more robust networking will want to invest in a VPN.
