You are a Web Administrator of Millennium Inc. The company has hosted its Web site within its network. The management wants the company's vendors to be able to connect to the corporate site from their

EAP is an authentication framework used at the network access layer to verify identity, but it does not by itself encrypt or tunnel data across a public network.

WEP is a deprecated wireless encryption protocol applicable only to Wi-Fi segments and provides no security for internet-based site-to-site or client-to-site communications.

A smart card is a physical authentication token that verifies user identity but does not establish an encrypted communication channel between the vendor and the corporate site.

A VPN creates a cryptographically secured tunnel between the remote vendor and the corporate network over the untrusted public internet, ensuring confidentiality and integrity of all transmitted data. It can use protocols such as IPSec or SSL/TLS to authenticate both endpoints and encrypt the session. This directly addresses the concern of securing data traversing a public network between external vendors and the internal corporate site.