VPN

Virtual Private Networks are the best thing since sliced bread. No, really.

For those of you who don’t know, a Virtual Private Network is a secure way to connect two or more locations using the Internet. As a result, it’s much cheaper to set up than leased lines and even the smallest businesses can afford them, because they can be set up for a few hundred pounds.

For example, you have a file server in the office but need to work at home one day. You’ve just settled down to write up the sales figures but realize that you’ve left the spreadsheet on the server. Using your home Internet connection and software built into Windows XP, you can connect to the server and open that spreadsheet just like being in the office. Ok: it’s probably a little slower, but it’s a lot faster than getting in the car and driving there.

If you have two offices and broadband connections in both, you can link them together using a VPN. The VPN software encrypts everything you send, so that no-one can access your confidential data.

But it’s not just for the small business. Many medium and large organizations are using VPN technology now, in a variety of ways. It allows you to work from home or wherever there’s an Internet connection, which helps you to stay in touch and may just reduce your carbon footprint.

We’ve recently set up a VPN to allow a financial adviser to work remotely, sharing his contact management database with the office and keeping in sync. For another company, we set up a VPN link so that we could provide help and advice when they needed remote support. Whenever there’s an issue, they can actually show us what the problem is and we can fix it. It means that we can respond more quickly and reduces both our costs by cutting out the need to travel to site for what may be a simple problem.

They’re not difficult to maintain. We can set one up and provide you with all the details for you to maintain it yourself, or we can support it remotely. If you think it might help you, call us for more details.