Public Internet connections are convenient but potentially risky if you don’t take a few precautions.
Walk into any coffee shop or hotel lobby and you’ll witness one of the most obvious signs of our times: People of all ages and vocations browsing the web and checking email from their smartphones or laptops. If you get close enough to see what’s on their screens, you might even see some of these road warriors accessing business applications in the cloud, such as a salesperson checking into their customer relationship management (CRM) database or preparing for a meeting in an online collaboration space. But you have to wonder: how secure is that connection?
Before you give your employees the go-ahead to work outside the office, make sure they know how to securely log in to your small business network from Wi-Fi hotspots. Otherwise, any information they transmit could be up for grabs, from their email password to credit card numbers to confidential business data. After all, a public hotspot is essentially a network for unknown and risky computers, and you never know who may be lurking online to capture your critical data.
Read More »
Tags: Hotspot, public internet, remote acc, security, small business, wi-fi
When Cisco conducted an industry survey a few months back, the research revealed that 61% of employees believe they don’t need to be in an office to be productive – and two-thirds of employees place a higher value on workplace flexibility than salary. Attitudes toward working remotely have certainly shifted over recent years, as working from home is no longer seen as a privilege – it’s expected.
But for just about any employee who has ever needed to work from home, getting a home office wireless network up and running can be time consuming, even if you already have an existing home network. By the time you change network profiles, start VPN clients, and deal with security concerns, not to mention time spent on the phone with the corporate IT helpdesk, you can easily spend a good chunk of your day setting up and configuring your wireless network.
But once again, Cisco can help.
Cisco announced today new OfficeExtend wireless solutions designed toward making the whole teleworking process painless for both the remote worker and the IT manager back at the corporate office. With the new OfficeExtend wireless solutions from Cisco, not only can you have home network profiles for personal use, but as an additional feature, the very same corporate WLAN profiles and security that you using at the office can now be replicated at home. And better yet, the new wireless solutions require no intervention from end users by allowing IT departments to remotely manage home access points alongside the rest of their corporate infrastructure. Read More »
Tags: 802.11n, access point, Aironet, AP, Cisco, Cisco 2500 Series, Cisco Aironet 600, Cisco Catalyst 6500, Cisco ClientLink, Cisco Connected World Report, Cisco ISR G2 Services-Ready Engine, Cisco VideoStream, Cisco Wireless Business Unit, Cisco Wireless Services Module, cleanair, controller, dual radio, Hotspot, mobility, OfficeExtend, service providers, videoscape, wi-fi, wireless, wireless controller, WiSM2, WNBU
