4. Determine the connectivity. Let's face it: dialup is obsolete. For telecommuting, high-speed Internet access should be mandatory. The Internet is not just a novelty or a passing fad; it is a utility that is part of the 21st-century lifestyle. So high- speed access should be mandatory when building a telecommuting solution. The two most common types are DSL and cable. These are commonly referred as "broadband" solutions, because they support a broad band of speed ranges and frequencies. Your local area network is a "baseband" solution because it supports a limited range of speeds and frequencies: 10 Mb, 100 MB, 1 GB, and so on. DSL and cable come in a variety of speed ranges that are specified in upload and download speeds. If your company chooses to reimburse the cost of a high-speed connection, do not be surprised if the DSL provider also requires an additional phone line or the cable provider requires you to also have basic cable installed as well. This is very common.
5. Secure the laptops. This step is overlooked more than any other. Your company's access is going into the open Internet, where it can be exposed to many things. Make sure that your telecommuters have a firewall (often referred as a "host- based firewall"), antivirus software set to autoupdate and autoscan the entire system at least once a week, and automatic logoff and encryption software to secure the data if the laptop is lost or stolen.
6. Set up a VPN. In this step we determine how the telecommuter securely connects back to the central office (referred to as a "tunnel"). This is an important step, because with a VPN tunnel, a telecommuter's computer is just like one on a desk onsite.
On the telecommuter side; VPNs require software on the laptop to connect back to the central site and some form of password personal ID number (PIN) generation. VPNs work like your automatic teller machine (ATM) card in that their security is based upon something you have (your ATM card) and something you know (your PIN). Each of these items is useless by itself, but together they are very powerful. This is referred to as two-factor authentication. There are two types of PIN generators: hard tokens and soft tokens. Hard tokens are actual pieces of hardware, and soft tokens are pieces of software installed on the laptop or remote access device. Each has tradeoffs, and they are typically dedicated by the VPN concentrator chosen at the corporate site.
On the IT side, purchase a VPN concentrator that will scale to at least twice as many users as you expect to telecommute at the start. This gives you room to grow and scale as your business evolves over time. At a minimum, it must support Triple Data Encryption Standard (3DES) encryption. Training for your IT staff and some sort of support agreement is critical for the overall success of a telecommuting project. Your employees will love this technology, so they will become dependent upon telecommuting to be successful. Because of this, make sure that any VPN solution you choose has the ability to scale, stateful failover, and load balancing. This preserves your initial investment and prevents you from being caught in an endless cycle of upgrades.
Because of VPN client software requirements, the industry is moving toward a "clientless" solution. That is where Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) VPNs come in. These are excellent solutions, but they can be initially expensive and require more setup and configuration time from your IT team. The nice thing is that telecommuters use a Web browser as the client instead of an actual VPN client. A lot of VPN concentrators offer both client-based (IP Security [IPsec]) and clientless (SSL) VPN access. This gives you excellent scalability.
7. Decide whether to use IP phones or traditional phones. Most telecommuters will need a telephone. Many home offices are in locations where cell phones do not work. Traditional phone services are another expense that should be factored in. If your company has an IP phone system, then you can use that investment by providing IP phones to your telecommuters. An IP softphone (software-based phone on a laptop) can be used to provide telephony services to mobile workers in hotels, cutting down on cost for expensive hotel phones or cell phone bills. Many companies that were initially interested in an IP phone solution have decided to go that direction to save even more money when they started mobilizing their workforce.
8. Decide about general maintenance. Besides security, one of the most overlooked areas of telecommuting is patch management and data backup. This is the most important reason for a high-speed Internet connection. Telecommuters should still be required to run the most recent corporate standard software and to back up their files to the corporate file server so they can be restored or recovered if necessary. If the backup can be automated to run once a week at a certain time, that is even better. Make sure your IT team staggers the backup times so you do not overload your system.
A daily 30-minute drive to work equates to approximately six work weeks a year. Couple that with talent being spread across the globe, and you see that telecommuting is a great way to allow employees to do more work, more efficiently, from anywhere. Telecommuting allows you to grow your business without the additional expense of purchasing a larger building and the logistics involved. Most employees see telecommuting as a real benefit, so it is great for morale and employee retention.
Questions or comments? Please contact the author: Jimmy Ray Purser, Network Solutions Expert, Cisco Systems. Email: jipurser@cisco.com
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