A global logistics client was operating thousands of IPsec VPN tunnels that connected vendors, customers, and internal business units to critical systems. These tunnels were mission-critical, but managing them had become unsustainable. Each tunnel had different encryption settings, inconsistent naming conventions, and no clear ownership. Lifecycle management was nonexistent,dead tunnels stayed alive indefinitely, while active ones lacked visibility beyond the firewalls.
The process to manage them was painful. Engineers relied on spreadsheets, screenshots, and email chains to track changes. Provisioning required dedicated engineering time. Updates created ticket backlogs. Support staff couldn’t answer basic tunnel status questions without escalation. Vendors and customers were left waiting days for connectivity changes. As the tunnel count exploded, the operational debt grew with it. The environment had scaled, but the processes around it had not.
December 2018
Logistics
Operational Excellence
THIRD SPECTRUM started with a deep dive into the client’s existing workflow. We reviewed firewall configs, provisioning requests, and historical trouble tickets. It quickly became clear that the challenge wasn’t just volume, it was inconsistency and lack of lifecycle ownership.
We built a custom tool, a centralized control panel that gave support staff visibility and management capabilities over the VPN ecosystem. It didn’t just list tunnels; it actively managed them. With role-based access, validation logic, and a clean interface, support teams could provision, modify, monitor, and retire tunnels without needing firewall access or constant escalation.
The platform delivered a real-time dashboard of every IPsec VPN tunnel across the client’s infrastructure. Support staff could instantly search tunnels by vendor, customer, location, or owner. Each entry showed its current state, last negotiation time, and peer details. Status indicators made it clear which tunnels were healthy, failing, or ready for retirement.
Provisioning, once a multi-day engineering task, became a guided process. Parameters were auto-generated based on business unit and peer type. The system validated inputs, enforced standards, and deployed changes with audit logging. Updates to PSKs or timers could be performed just as easily.
To tie it all together, we integrated custom monitoring into the client’s existing observability platform. Tunnel health was continuously tracked. Failures or unexpected state changes triggered alerts through the same escalation logic used for other infrastructure. Finally, tunnel retirement became a structured process: a single click triggered automated cleanup, re-tagging, and notifications to the right teams or partners.
The impact was immediate. Tunnel-related tickets were removed from the engineering queue, freeing engineers for higher-value work. Provisioning time dropped from days to minutes. Support teams could make updates directly, without waiting for escalation. Tunnel visibility was no longer locked inside firewalls but available to any authorized user.
Monitoring integration ensured VPN tunnels were tracked alongside other infrastructure, enabling proactive response to outages. Failures were caught in real time, not hours later after customer complaints.
Most importantly, the solution scaled. The client could grow their VPN footprint without adding headcount or complexity. The once chaotic tunnel environment became a transparent, manageable system owned by operations. VPN management stopped being a bottleneck and became a strength.
