Secure Remote Access: Not “Something Nice to Have”
By Reggie Best, Executive Vice and General Manager, AEP
Monday, 19 December 2005 06:23 EST
By utilising its existing SSL VPN solution the applications required could be accessed securely through any web browser and with extremely low bandwidth requirements. Throughout the G8 Summit, key personnel successfully used the NSP for secure remote access to services and applications located at Perth & Kinross Council’s headquarters.
“The Summit presented a number of interesting communications challenges for the Council and its partners, but with the technical expertise of our own staff and the AEP Networks team we successfully met all of those challenges,” said Roddy McArthur, Executive Director (Corporate Services), Perth & Kinross Council.
By the end of the summit, G8 leaders agreed to effectively double assistance to Africa, advance peace in the Middle East through Palestinian aid, and establish a plan of action to combat global climate change.
While the G8 Summit is a particularly compelling example, it underscores the rapidly expanding need for secure remote access to business applications by commercial as well as government enterprises.
In fact, the “golden moment” for teleworking, remote access and remote working may finally have arrived.
Teleworking is an elegantly simple idea that has taken a surprisingly long time to germinate. Teleworking’s promise is that it can save an enterprise significant time, money and resources for an employee to work regularly from home rather than travel to an (often distant) office.
Teleworking can also contribute directly to greater employee productivity and satisfaction by letting home-based workers accommodate domestic needs such as caring for a sick child, attending to home repairs or juggling school appointments.
SSL VPNs are providing a key piece of the puzzle for businesses and government agencies who need to roll out secure remote access to their teleworking employees, as well as to “day extenders” (workers who go into the office but also check email from home) and even business partners outside the corporate network. The technology is easy for businesses to adopt, since SSL VPNs typically consist of a single preconfigured device that can be up and running within a business’s data centre in about 45 minutes.
One of the greatest benefits of SSL VPN technology is that because it is user-based, not device-based, an authorized user can login from any Web-enabled PC. No longer is it necessary to carry a laptop from office to home; the necessary authorization is obtained through a Web portal accessible from anywhere. As long as a worker has Internet access through their home computer – and who doesn’t today? – he or she can access all their business applications (not just email) exactly as if they were at work.
What’s more, today’s SSL VPNs incorporate powerful “end point integrity” subsystems to ensure that the enterprise network is protected from viruses and other threats that may reside on home PCs outside the company’s control.
Another interesting development is also spurring the adoption of SSL VPN technology: the need for businesses to provide secure remote access while complying with an ever-increasing set of government rules and regulations. Some of which include:
1) Flexible Working Act of 2003 (U.K.) giving mothers and fathers the right to request to work flexibly if they have children under the age of 5.
2) Sarbanes-Oxley Act (U.S.), which regulates corporate financial recordkeeping, with implications for data storage and how data is accessed.
3) The Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA (U.S.) defines rules for how individual health records must be maintained, including privacy and security requirements.
Simply put, SSL VPNs have quickly become the technology of choice that is enabling many companies to provision their workers with the ability to work from anywhere, without any compromise in functionality, accessibility or performance. And because they rely on already-deployed Web technology such as browsers and SSL encryption, the cost of these systems is far less than older, non-Web-based VPNs such as IPSec-based systems.
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