Some recent technologies to support warriors on the road

Some recent technologies to support warriors on the road

Vishnu K. Mahmud, Contributor, Jakarta

vmahmud@yahoo.com

Imagine having to visit six different countries within two weeks.
Going from client to client, meeting various people, conducting
power lunches with different types of cuisine, all the while
keeping in touch with your office to coordinate corporate
activities worldwide.

Christian Hentschel doesn't dream about that anymore. He
actually does it.

The director of business development for advanced technologies
at Cisco Systems Asia Pacific is testimony to how traveling
businesspeople can effectively keep in contact with their home
offices despite being constantly on the move.

Armed with only a laptop, Hentschel can touch base with his
Singapore office thanks to Internet Protocol (IP) technology.
Once connected to the Internet, at his hotel or overseas office,
he can immediately log on to his office network thanks to a VPN
(Virtual Private Network) client which creates a secure
communications tunnel within the chaos of the World Wide Web.

From there, he can send and answer e-mails as well as share
files just as if he were physically at the office. With advances
in Voice over IP (VoIP) technology, Hentschel can also pick up
voice mail from his Singapore desk.

But is it secure?

"Security is very high on everyone's agenda," says Hentschel.
"A few years ago, you could expect a computer 'attack' every
eight hours. Now it's eight minutes."

That is only too true. The past few months have seen thousands
of computers brought to their knees courtesy of two Internet
worms. Beyond that, there are still the daily dosages of viruses
that continue to wreak havoc on networks, forcing businesses to
go offline, cutting them off from the digital arena.

Cisco Systems is known for its network switches that help
power the Internet. But it also has an abundance of products and
services that help companies secure their networks.

Although it already sells firewalls, intrusion detection
systems (IDS) and VPN solutions, Hentschel says that Cisco offers
end-to-end infrastructure services for business and companies to
ensure the safety of their networks.

"We can simulate worm attacks to see if the design of the
network is efficient. And our IDS software can also help IT
administrators to understand the behavior of users and inquiries
of (Internet) hosts, in order to identify if something has the
potential to hurt the network or not."

Threats don't only come from external sources, but also from
internal divisions. With IDS, businesses can, for example,
quickly take note if a certain computer is using a lot of
bandwidth to send files, or if an external "authorized" user is
snooping around the network.

Thanks to the VPN connection and the integration of the phone
system at Cisco with VoIP, Hentschel can even answer calls
addressed to his Singapore number anywhere around the world,
armed with a Bluetooth headset connected to his notebook.

"The system is set up to detect whenever I am on the network.
It can then connect the voice mail and phone lines via my
computer. Voice is just another application, nothing more,"
Hentschel said enthusiastically.

VoIP is said to be an efficient telecommunications medium,
allowing companies to connect far-flung offices via the Internet,
bypassing costly telecom charges. The regulations for public use
of VoIP in Indonesia are rather murky but corporations are
allowed to use it internally.

With the proliferation of WiFi (Wireless Fidelity) "hot spots"
around Asia, network connections to the office are getting
easier.

And everything is slowly converging. Businesses can set up
their wireless networks, secured with VPN and firewalls, all the
while keeping in contact with their road warriors via next
generation IP telephony within public hot spots.

Considering all this technology, what else can we expect in
the future?

"The biggest impact comes from the entertainment and the
consumer market, which demand these facilities be made available
on devices to make it easier for customers to use wherever they
are," says Hentschel.

Some PDAs and practically all new notebook computers now
support the 802.11 wireless protocols, allowing them to connect
to the Internet via WiFi. In addition, future new consumer
gadgets are expected to be WiFi ready.

Budding entrepreneurs could perhaps offer Internet access via
a city-wide WiFi hot spot, while others sell sports or
entertainment channels via this infrastructure, secured with a
subscription password and VPN technology.

But for the moment, the technology to ensure that
businesspeople can continuously keep in touch with their offices
wherever they are continues to evolve, allowing companies to be
more flexible and efficient in how they conduct business.

Those who fail to keep up with the IT curve may lose out to
their competitors.