iPhone gets Check Point's VPN support

Another boost for iPhone to be used in corporate & enterprise companies came from Check Point, called VPN-1. Using iPhone's embedded Layer 2 Transport Protocol (L2TP), the VPN-1 located in a company's server can create specific login credentials for each iPhone users using a shared secret password and certificates for all iPhones on the network.

Check Point explained that by deploying Check Point Integrated Appliance Solutions (CPIAS), is all we needed without any hassle of installing other softwares / applications into iPhone. This way the companies who have adopted CPIAS, can offer secure Virtual Private Networking (VPN) to any mobile phone's platforms that their employees have; not just for iPhone.

As you might know it, VPN is the most best to secure connections between two points so they can communicate freely without fear of someone eaves-dropping the contents. This is what sometimes nowadays still called "tunneling" the connection, in layman's lingo. We often use the VPN technology in on-line banking, and usually the Banks will provide a VPN software for us to install first before using it. Like what I'm currently using too, for an on-line banking access by one of major bank here in Indonesia.

It's very rare to see a Bank to pick up quickly on new technologies like CPIAS has offered, where IMHO could expand the traditional customers who only went to bank or use their computer / laptop to make bank transactions. Even though mobile banking has already available now, it's still based on text that only using SIM's limited features. Things could turn around for a big time, if Banks can provide an interactive web-based banking services to customers. So it'll depend on what Banks are concerned about: secure wireless communications.

I'm actually crossed my fingers and pray that Palm hasn't forgot to embed L2TP into its next Palm Nova OS, especially when Palm is intended to gain back their lost standing in smartphone market for business users...

Sources are from Macworld & "Building Wireless Community Networks" by Rob Flickenger (an O'Reilly book).

[blogged with my Treo 750v]