I have several clients that require a VPN -Virtual Private Network, and it can be a great solution to businesses both large and small.  So what is a VPN? Basically, think of it as using the internet to extend your office network to anywhere in the world.  If you have remote offices, employees that work from home, or sales people on the road, a VPN can be a valuable tool.  Those off site workers can access your local network, server, and even shared printers!  They can essentially work as if they were in the office.

Our favourite tool for setting up a virtual network is Hamachi. It is free for up to 5 users, and they have a very reasonable yearly price for larger networks. It is a small program that runs in the background on Windows and Mac, and assigns each Hamachi user a unique private IP address.  This is what creates the security.  Not only do you need a username and password to connect to the network, but you also need to have an approved IP address and save a security file to your device.  If you run a server, they would also still need to log in as they normally would, adding another layer of security.

The speed of the network, is of course, dependent on the internet connection… but any connection will do.  You can even use a public WiFi connection and not have to worry about someone hacking you. I have used mine with my cell phone tethered to my laptop, and it worked just fine.