IT Security & Network Security News & Reviews: Remote Access Offers Challenges, Benefits for Companies and IT

Remote access for employees has become a growing concern for IT shops everywhere, accelerated by the adoption of mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones into the enterprise and small and midsize businesses. That proliferation of software and hardware by multiple vendors makes offering secure and easy remote access a far larger and more complicated task for IT administrators. Despite the increasing complexity, ubiquitous remote access offers multiple benefits. It can make remote workers more flexible, lower costs for IT and allow a business to more easily employ far-flung workers. In order to reach that desired end-point, though, IT administrators need to examine how to make their remote access platform not only secure as possible, but also streamlined enough for users to operate with a minimum of frustration. Fortunately, a number of vendors have been working on solutions to both those challenges. Companies such as Intel and Hewlett-Packard are in the midst of developing (or offering) fingerprint readers, dual-factor passwords and other methods of user authentication. Others are offering cloud-based and virtualizations for winnowing down the number of steps needed to access a network. In the end, though, it takes some thought and work by IT administrators to make remote access a reality.