Workers Want Remote Access, Better VPNs

by Jeffrey Burt

Ninety percent of those surveyed said they need to be able to access business files and applications via their computer or mobile device if they’re to get their jobs done.

Most U.S. workers—89 percent of them—will not tolerate as much as an hour of downtime in the business network, according to the survey.

Almost half of those surveyed—49 percent—say they won’t tolerate even a few minutes of corporate network downtime.

Seventy-seven percent of U.S. workers are not completely satisfied with the remote access capabilities they’re given, and 30 percent said they don’t have any remote access.

Forty-nine percent of respondents said extreme weather events—from hurricanes to the polar vortex—have stranded them or co-workers with no access to office files or applications. Sixty-six percent said extreme weather has kept them from getting work done remotely.

Three-quarters of U.S. employees rely on remote access to give them flexibility in when and where they work.

Sixty percent of respondents said they are more productive using VPN or remote access to the corporate network, while 57 percent said they use that access to avoid having to download files to their PC or use such cloud file-sharing services as Dropbox.

Sixty-five percent of U.S. employees submit at least one IT trouble ticket a month related to remote access issues.

The two top areas where survey respondents said their VPN or remote access software needs to be improved are in performance (58 percent) and reliability of the connection (43 percent).

Twenty-six percent of U.S. workers want their VPN or remote access software to work better on the kind of public WiFi connections that are found in such places as hotels and Starbucks.