IP Security Validator works both interactively as a command line tool and in a "quiet" mode. In interactive mode, the command line tool (ipsecvalidate) reports the results on the standard output in words (human-readable form). In quiet mode, IP Security Validator reports the result via a single return parameter without writing to standard output; this quality makes it suitable to be used as part of administration scripts that run regularly to validate VPN connectivity and encapsulation.