ELSTER, German Federal States Electronic Tax System

For ELSTER, the high-profile IT project of the German tax authorities, a highly encrypted virtual private network (VPN) was constructed with the crypto appliance genubox to handle secure transfer of electronic tax returns. The VPN spans two central clearing centers in Munich and Düsseldorf, which receive the electronic tax data from businesses and private individuals, and the tax authorities of all 16 federal states (Länder). To cope with the high volumes of data involved, both node points are equipped with two genuboxes, in the large-scale hardware model, which communicate with the compact genuboxes at the 16 computing centers operated by the Länder.