Which service provides a secure connection between on-premises and Alibaba Cloud environments?

The correct answer is that the Alibaba Cloud VPN Gateway provides a secure connection between on-premises and Alibaba Cloud environments. The VPN Gateway creates an encrypted tunnel over the public internet, allowing secure communication between your on-premises network and your Alibaba Cloud Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). This is essential for businesses that require secure data transfer and want to maintain a hybrid cloud infrastructure where resources are split between on-premises and cloud environments.

The other options serve different functions: Alibaba Cloud Direct Access is focused on dedicated, high-bandwidth access but is not primarily about providing secure connections; Alibaba Cloud ExpressConnect is typically used for direct connections with low latency and high reliability, ideal for workloads needing consistent bandwidth, but it does not use the VPN protocol for encrypted connections. Alibaba Cloud Firewall is designed for network security and traffic filtering, protecting resources within the cloud rather than establishing a secure link to an external network.