If you've never considered remote access to your company systems before, it can appear to be a complex subject. In this article I'll attempt to break the typical remote access solution into it's component parts, with some examples of how these actually work.

The first thing to consider when looking at remote access, is what you are trying to achieve. This needs a little bit of thought, as it will determine the requirements for things like connection speeds, security, and even what sort of kit you need to have at the remote end.

For a typical home worker solution, the remote user will require to have access to email as a minimum, and perhaps a file share on an office server. Occasionally there may be extra requirements such as telephony or perhaps even video conferencing, but we'll start with the basics for now.

A typical remote working setup will consist of the following :

• Some service at the company site that the remote worker needs to access, such as email or files
• some equipment at the home worker's house, most likely a PC
• a link between the two sites - normally either the internet or a dial-up telephone line connection
• a security system that will allow only authorised users to access the service(s) at the company site

The most important part of the above is the security system. without this, anyone could potentially access your corporate data, or cause malicious damage to your systems. Fortunately IT security is a fairly mature industry, and there are very reliable systems that can be put in place that won't cost a fortune.

I'll start with connectivity - without this, nothing else will be of any use. With the advent of broadband access to the internet, it is now possible to have simple connectivity between the remote worker's home and the company site. Prior to this, connectivity was normally handled by dial up lines, either by modem over a regular telephone line, or sometimes by ISDN, a kind of early digital telephone system. The problem with these systems was that in order to be connected, a call had to be made, incurring call charges. this meant that it was not really practical for anyone to be online to the office network all day, and connections were made as required. Waiting for the line to dial up and connect, coupled with a 56k connection speed (if you were lucky) meant that dial up connections were slow and often painful to use, especially if you had a large file to transfer and the line went down.

Modern broadband communications mean that it is relatively simple to create a fast reliable link from home to office. Just as the telephone network is a network of hard-wired telephone lines that effectively connect every telephone in the world to every other via exchanges, the internet effectively connects every computer on the internet to every other, via the internet equivalent of telephone exchanges, routers.

Just as the old dial-up services required to have a modem at the company site listening for incoming calls, internet based connectivity requires a device at the company end listening for incoming connection requests. Often, this is the router that the company uses to connect to the internet. Some routers will handle security themselves, others will require a separate security system to validate any incoming connection. I'll go into more detail on connection types and security in another article, but as far as the home worker is concerned, this is normally set up by simply clicking on an icon, such as 'connect to office' or similar.

Once the connection is made, the home worker's PC is effectively on the office network. The home worker has access to systems as if they were in the office.

Alternatively, some servicies such as email can be accessed via a web page. This does not require a dedicated connection, but works like any other web site. The home worker puts the address of the service into their browser, and the email system or file sharing system asks for a username and password. The service then provides the information or files that the home worker is authorised to see.

Security for these solutions is usually built in, but often based on relatively simple username and password type authentication  - for sensitive data it is a good idea to consider additional levels of security with the use of biometric or token based authentication - more of these in another article.