Remote Access
8 February 2011
Working from home, or working remotely, is becoming more and more common. Typical uses our clients have for remote access include
- dealing with email on the train
- working from home part-time during maternity leave
- working onsite or with clients when out of the office
- catching up with admin on the weekend
Each of these uses has different requirements. The most common technical requirements are
- access to email when out of the office
- access to files when out of the office
- access to databases / accounts / etc when out of the office
- access to office calendars when out of the office
Access to email (1) is generally straightforward. If you have your own mail server it’s simple to allow access to it from outside the building. If you are using the mail service provided by your ISP no changes need to be made – just configure your email client appropriately. There are significant caveats regarding POP mail at multiple locations and we strongly recommend switching to IMAP mail. If your service provider does not support IMAP consider changing provider or installing your own mail server. See Email & Spam Strategies for more details
Access to files while out of the office (2) is more complex. The quick & dirty way is to take a copy with you on a memory stick, copy it to your laptop or email it to yourself. Another way is copy files to a Cloud system such as MobileMe (aka .Mac). MobileMe is convenient for Macintosh users. It provides online iDisk storage with public and private, password-protected areas. Your iDisk is accessible directly from any iPhone, iPad, MacBook or PC laptop with an internet connection. All these options suffer from the same problem – these are copies and will be out of date as soon as the originals are modified
Access to database and accounting systems (3) and office calendars (4) can’t reasonably be made by using remote copies – it’s too prone to errors caused by using the wrong versions of files. It’s possible to allow direct access to these services via the internet but this quickly becomes complex, hard to manage and difficult to secure
The best solution to options 2, 3 & 4 is to use a Virtual Private Network. A VPN allows a direct connection to your office network via the Internet. A VPN creates a secure, encrypted connection between two points, typically your office network router and the VPN client software on a remote user’s laptop. The VPN connection allows a remote user to become a part of the office network and to access most services as though sitting in the office. This makes access to office services like shared calendars, accounting systems & Filemaker databases simple – once the VPN is connected there are no additional steps needed
One big benefit of a VPN is the level of control you have over user access. It’s possible to restrict access on a per-person basis to specific machines or services. By combining this with your existing file server user / password setup it is possible to allow client access to specific folders or shares, restrict freelancers to specific areas or allow free access to the network for remote IT support
We setup VPNs using Cisco routers & client software and use a partner company to configure, test & support the VPN.
More reading: VPN and VPN Technologies, Cisco Press
[...] to defined areas, file server shares or any desired level of access. A VPN is ideal for allowing remote access to the network from home or when [...]