Take a secure hotspot home with you

Roaming service lets company IT manage your home broadband

By Bryan Betts • Get more from this author

Posted in Small Biz, 23rd July 2007 09:17 GMT

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For anyone fed up with support calls from users trying to connect into the corporate network from home, or set up security on their home wireless router, roaming specialist iPass reckons it has a solution.

The company is bringing its managed home-office service to Europe, offering to put broadband and a managed wireless router into the homes of its customers' staff, preconfigured as part of their corporate LAN. It claimed users connect securely via the service, called iPass Virtual Office, just as they would at a wireless hotspot.

"It provides connectivity for working from home," iPass technical director Ken Green said. "We provision and manage the DSL and wireless router that's preconfigured to your corporate requirements."

He added that he'd expect most customers to set up two separate virtual networks on the router, one for corporate use and another to provide home PCs with access to the internet.

Green said it's not just the risk that users working from home might not set up their security properly, and could be transmitting sensitive web traffic over an open wireless link - it also avoids them wasting time by trying to fix problems themselves.

"It's a question of the efficiency of a high-value worker at home," he explained. "It gives IT the ability to manage the service, raise trouble-tickets, and so on." ®

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