The project is maintained by Andreas Steffen who is a professor emeritus for Security in Communications with the University of Applied Sciences in Rapperswil, Switzerland.

A unique feature is the use of X.509 attribute certificates to implement access control schemes based on group memberships.

StrongSwan interoperates with other IPsec implementations, including various Microsoft Windows and macOS VPN clients.

The current version of strongSwan fully implements the Internet Key Exchange (IKEv2) protocol defined by RFC 7296.

An important capability is the use of X.509 Certificate Attributes, which permits it to utilize complex access control mechanisms on the basis of group memberships.