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Transport-Teknik’s purchasers and salespeople spend a lot of time on the road visiting customers and vendors. Remote access is essential for them to do their jobs efficiently, for example to enter and confirm orders and to check email. But their old system required users to call in via an analog line, which sometimes required seven or eight tries before they actually got connected. And if someone hacked through the router, or got hold of the telephone number, the network was at risk.
So, Transport-Teknik was looking for something new, when Yvonne Hjelm Mathiasen, one of two IT managers at the company, witnessed a demonstration of G/On. It left her amazed.
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The demo that made jaws drop
"We first saw the solution at a seminar," Mathiasen says. "The demonstrator borrowed someone’s laptop, inserted this little key [the G/On USB key], and boom, there was Lotus Notes on the desktop. Everyone around the table was astounded.
"Afterwards, the guy whose computer they were using ran through it to see if this little key had left anything on his hard drive that ‘smelled’ of Lotus Notes. He couldn’t find a trace. In other words, the laptop itself had never become part of the network, so no spyware or viruses could hurt the network via this user’s laptop. At that point, we were so tired of the old system that when we saw this we jumped on it, and it hasn’t disappointed us one bit."
The final proof that convinced them
Before actually making the purchase, Transport-Teknik wanted independent confirmation of the new system’s security. They sent one of the G/On USB keys to a company that specializes in testing security. G/On passed the test with flying colors.
"They pointed out that one of the factors that makes the system secure is that you need both the physical key and knowledge of a password to gain access. With our old system, if someone got hold of the telephone number orgot through the router, they could hack into the system. With G/On you not only need the password, you also need the physical key." Mathiasen says. "As an administrator, this makes me feel much more secure. I know that if a key has disappeared, I can just nuke it."
An instant hit with everyone in the company
The G/On solution was installed within a day, and all 25 employees who use remote access took to it immediately. According to Mathiasen, the typical user reaction was, "Can it really be this easy?"
Part of what makes G/On so simple is that you only have to take the little USB key with you; you don’t need your computer. If you have access to any computer with an Internet connection, you’re on.
"Users just plug it in. It takes seconds, and you’re on the network just like at the office," Mathiasen says. "And as an IT manager, I appreciate the fact that it’s so easy to set up users and control what they’re doing via Microsoft’s Active Directory. Before, I had to set up every new user twice, first in the router and then in the domain. It used to take me up to an hour to set up a new user in our other system. Now, it only takes minutes."
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