Staying Secure on the Road

Securely sending and receiving sensitive data is essential for all business travellers. Setting up and maintaining a VPN (Virtual Private Network) is the ideal solution

As a business traveller is it crucial to have a secure and reliable connection to your own desktop PC, or your enterprises servers. To achieve this you need to use a VPN or Virtual Private Network.

There are a number of leading platforms with Microsoft and Cisco being the market leaders. Whichever platform your business is based on, the principles of connecting a remote computer to a server are similar. Luckily both Windows XP and Vista are easily configured to enable you to quickly and securely connect to whatever VPN your business uses.

[Q] How can a VPN help me as a business traveller?

[A] The overriding benefit for any businessperson that travels is that they can be confident they can connect to their own personal computer, or their business's servers securely over the Internet. Being able to work remotely from any location is made possible by secure VPN technologies.

[Q] What kind of computer do I need to use a VPN?

[A] The most popular type of VNP not surprisingly is based on Microsoft Windows technology. It is called their Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP)-based remote access client. This utility is built into every version of Windows from Windows 2000 onwards.

[Q] Can I use my PDA with a VPN?

[A] Some of the PDAs on the market are closely linked to the mobile phone network provider that supports the handset, but you should be able to configure any PDA that uses Windows or Symbian to use the VPN that your business is using for secure communications over the Internet.

[Q] How secure are VPNs?

[A] All VPNs are highly secure as they all use 128-bit SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption. This is the most secure form of encryption that is in use today. All E-commerce website use this level of security to gather payment information from their customers. As such, the connection between your PC or PDA when on a business trip and your business's servers is highly secure.

[Q] Is a VPN the same as our company's extranet?

[A] Not really as a VPN has many more features. An extranet is basically an extended website that remote users can access. Whereas, a VPN gives you infinitely more access privileges when you log onto your business's servers from your remote location.

[Q] Will I have any technical issues connecting to my VPN when on a business trip?

[A] The main issue you face is Internet traffic, and how robust the ISP (Internet Service Providers) networks are between your remote location and your organisations servers. As you are routing your communications over the Internet, you are always at the mercy of any bandwidth issues that may occur.

You can use the Connect to a Workplace wizard by following the steps below:

[1] Click the Start button from your desktop
[2] Click the Control Panel link that appear from the pop-up menu
[3] Click the Network and Internet link
[4] Click Network and Sharing Centre option
[5] Click Set up a connection or network link
[6] Click Connect to a Workplace option and follow the screen prompts as the wizard presents them to you.

Note: You will need the name of the server you want to set-up a connection with to complete the wizard. You will also need the user name and password that you usually use to access the server from your office PC.

GoToMyPC

The set-up of a complete VPN network can be expensive and time consuming for smaller organisations. If you just need to securely connect to your base computer while you are travelling, the GoToMyPC service is an ideal solution. Like a standard VPN network, you can remotely connect to any other computer in the world that you have set-up the GoToMyPC utility on.

The practical upshot of this service is that it is completely web based and therefore doesn't need any IT infrastructure to support it. GoToMyPC Corporate offers even the smallest business the opportunity to stay connected with all their remote workers for the minimal investment in software and hardware.

Just as a full VPN would use encryption, GoToMyPC uses industry standard 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption to ensure the privacy of all remote connections. For the business traveller this means total peace of mind when accessing or sending sensitive data over the network from any Windows PC, or PDA running the PocketPC, Windows Mobile or Windows CE operating systems.