The first task is to establish a link to the public network i.e. the Internet, using dial-up 56K, GPRS or 3G for example. Once the Internet connection has been established, there are further connectivity decisions required based on the type of access needed. Creating a VPN connection is the most common and arguably more secure method.

Remote Desktop has also increased in popularity due to simplicity and enhanced security provided by the latest RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) clients. Using either of these methods can provide whatever degree of access is required to your internal network's resources. Another consideration is the type of device most appropriate for your field team e.g. a laptop or PDA. Increasingly, smartphones using the Microsoft Mobile 5.0/6.0 operating systems, are being used by field based teams rather than Blackberrys. This is particularly the case where people need the benefits of push email and the ability to read, create, edit and send MS Office files.

 

Opening access to any internal network for remote users will inevitably pose some security threats. However, employing industry standard security models, appropriate levels of encryption, secure tunnelling, strong authentication requirements etc should ensure that those connections are indeed secure.

At Ergo we provide secure remote access for many of our clients and we regularly carry out penetration testing on customer sites to ensure that our security implementations are true.

Mobile technology is improving and expanding at a phenomenal rate allowing us to remove the necessity of a morning commute, enabling a sales rep to submit orders from the customer’s site, receive and respond to email on a mobile phone, log in from home to finish off some daily tasks, and so on. All of these functionalities of mobile technology go to improving efficient management of time. There are many types of workers suited to mobile working; workers whose job necessitates that they are on the road, workers who do not need to be in the office to do their job and senior management. How confident can you be that your company will not be left behind if you choose not to mobilise your workforce?

It is possible to access POP3 e-mail accounts such as eircom.net,Gmail and Hotmail using a PDA. However, this will not be “Push Email”as you will have to retrieve the emails yourself by hitting the “send/receive”button. If you want to receive “Push Email” from your office-based e-mail server,then you will need to have Microsoft Exchange Server2003 with service pack 2 or later, installed on the server.

Most of the modern handheld devices can take memory cards, much the same as the memory cards used in digital cameras.Once you’ve setup your PDA, you can backup your configuration to a memory card.That way, if the battery is run down completely again, you can restore all of your settings from the backup on the memory card.

PDA devices are not vulnerable in the same way as PCs because the operating system is installed on a ROM chip whereas a standard PC uses a hard disk to store the operating system and programs. However, your PDA can be affected by viral infections. The majority of the popular anti-virus software manufacturers offer pocket PC and PDA versions of their products to provide such protection. Therefore it would be prudent to install anti-virus software on your PDA. At a minimum you should ensure that the PDA is regularly connected to and scanned by a PC running robust and up to date anti-virus software.

By setting up a Virtual Private Network (VPN), you can enable remote workers to access resources on the company network.A VPN can be easily set up on the remote computer using Windows XP. All that isneeded is the IP address of the remote access server. If you are using a firewall, you should be able to obtain a VPN client specific to the type of firewall you use on your network e.g. a SonicWall firewall and a SonicWall VPN client.