A good way to work from home is to use a VPN. Isn’t that a TV network you ask? Not UPN, but VPN or Virtual Private Network. A VPN lets you connect to your business network using an encrypted tunnel over the public internet. This is the next best thing to having an actual physical connection between your house, your hotel or even another office and your main office. It is considerably cheaper and relatively easy to have set up. With a VPN you can access your files stored on a server or even your e-mail as if you were in the office. The main noticeable difference will be speed and that will depend on the internet connection you use.
There are two types of VPN: client and site-to-site. What’s the difference, you ask? Both would perform best over a broadband or DSL connection, but one is like going through the dial-up process, while the other is like an always-on connection. The one you are more interested in for working from home is the client VPN. A client VPN involves using a software client to connect your PC or laptop to your company’s firewall. Once installed, using the VPN is as easy as opening a program and logging in with a username and password.
If your company doesn’t already have a firewall, then this is one more piece of ammunition to convince your boss the company needs one. What’s a firewall? You sure ask a lot of questions. A firewall allows you to send requests out to the internet, but doesn’t allow anything unauthorized to come in from the big bad internet. Seriously, if your business doesn’t already have one, it’s like driving your car without a seatbelt. You can probably get away with it for awhile, but eventually you are going to get hit.
The site-to-site VPN is normally used to connect two offices together, without having to go through the expense of a physical connection between them. This usually involves a firewall at each location. This is a little harder to set up, but easier to use than a client VPN, because there are no changes to the PCs.
What are you waiting for?
Let’s do some work from the beach!
