Helping your business to do more business
For those who don't know, VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, the technology is used to provide remote users with a secure tunnel between wherever they are (in an internet cafe for instance) and the company local area network (LAN), allowing them to access files and data stored on the network. This technology is a great enabler not just for mobile users who are on the road often, but also for those who'd like to work from home as VPN technology also enables teleworking.
I'm sure I'm not alone in having an old computer that's outlived it's useful life in the mainstream, but nonetheless is still working. There are a lot of options with these computers, you could give it to charity or a recycling centre for instance. But in either case I recommend you ensure that any private data on the disks is deleted first!
What do you do with the details of the contacts that you meet? In business when we meet new people we seem to invariably exchange business cards. That's great, as we end up with a card giving details of how to contact the person that we've just met. But what do we do with those details? Do we retain the business cards or store them on the computer somehow? For small businesses it seems to be an enduring problem, which people solve in a wide variety of ways. Many realise that the 'best' answer involves some form of database and so the simplest database of all, Microsoft Excel, gets roped into the solution.
In my last post I talked about securing a simple workgroup network aimed more at sharing an internet connection than sharing data. In this post I'll discuss securing a more sophisticated network which is the next step up.
As an IT consultant something which must always be at the forefront of my mind when offering advice to a client is the security of the network. These days nearly everyone that I meet has a permanent broadband connection to the internet, normally ADSL via the phone line. While this is by all accounts a very positive move forwards for everyone, especially those of us in a rural location, a permanent connection does have its drawbacks.