How To Connect OS X Lion To Cisco VPNs

Cisco recently announced it will discontinue its popular Cisco VPN client.  Cisco is moving customers to its Cisco AnyConnect client or to native support as it helps other vendors integrate support directly into their products. With OS X Lion, you can connect to your corporate network without requiring any changes on the part of the corporate infrastructure. This means that existing automations and management will function correctly for IT staff and have the advantage of not requiring IT to roll out new software.

To use this feature you will need to know your account information, your group password if one is used, and access to any one-time password generator tokens or software.

To provision your Mac, go to System Preferences and select Network.  When the Network Settings dialog opens, click on the + sign in the lower left corner to create a new network service:

When creating the service, OS X will prompt you for the service type and name. It uses Wi-Fi as the default.

Choose VPN for Interface. Here, I have used Cisco IPSec as the VPN Type, and typed in CorporateVPN as the Service Name.