How to secure work from home employees using FortiClient VPN

We have already discussed the benefits of using a VPN for your work from home employees in a separate article.

In this article we will briefly discuss how you can specifically use FortiClient VPN to give your work from home employees access to a VPN to help protect them online whilst they browse the internet and access company resources to get their work done.

Why Does Your Company Need a VPN For Its Work from Home Employees?

The benefits of setting up a VPN for your work from home employees is basically to make sure that the connection your work from home employees make to your corporate network remain secure and cannot be intercepted or compromised from online threats.

There are many paid and free VPN solutions out there.

We recommend using FortiClient SSL VPN.

What are the benefits of using FortiClient SSL VPN?

1. Offers a secure connection across IPsec or SSL.
2. Easy to install and configure.
3. Offers auto-connect and always up features.
4. Real-time antivirus protection
5. Anti-rootkit & anti-malware protection
6. Web filtering
7. FortiSandbox integration
8. Full application firewall
9. Vulnerability management
10. Two-factor authentication for VPN
11. YouTube video filtering
12. Adware & Riskware blocking
13. Centralised client management and monitoring
14. Centralised configuration provisioning and deployment

As you can see from the features above, FortiClient VPN is actually much more than just a standard VPN program.

You also get many value-added features that would otherwise require additional software and configuration, direct from one overall package.

FortiClient VPN comes in a free version and a paid version.

The free version simply provides standard secure connection across IPsec or SSL, web filtering, anti-rootkit and anti-malware protection, and can easily be installed as just the VPN only or support for all other VPN components and endpoint security features.

All other features not included in the free one are paid only.  This includes full customer support, as well as auto-connect and always up functionality.

It’s actually recommended for most companies whose employees are working from home to invest in the paid version of FortiClient VPN.

This is because you get the already mentioned auto-connect and always up features.  These are two very important for employees who work from home because without the auto-connect feature the chances of an employee forgetting to start the VPN and connect to it when they first turn on their computer is high.

Similarly, without the Always Up functionality, it means that the VPN automatically disconnects if no data is being transferred or received.

That means also that if an employee is not paying attention then the VPN can drop and they can still continue to browse the internet and access company resources to do their work, except this time they won’t be securely protected until they connect to the VPN again.

How your work from home employees can get started with FortiClient SSL VPN

Getting started with FortiClient VPN is easy, and just takes a few steps:

1. 1.       Download the FortiClient VPN software and install it on to their computer.
2. 2.       Log in to the VPN using the credentials given to them by the IT department.
3. 3.       Start browsing the internet as normal and make sure it works and you can access company resources from home whilst connected to the VPN.

Because the FortiClient VPN comes with a free version, you can easily give all your work from home employees an extra layer of network security to protect your company network resources online, by getting them to install the VPN and connect to it every time they work from home.

This protects your employees as they browse the internet and makes sure that any company resources that they access (email, shared resources etc.) are done using a secure connection which make sure that the connection is not exposed publicly to the internet where it could be compromised or intercepted.

When connecting over SSL there may be a small speed drop when browsing the internet.  But for most people it won’t be too noticeable.

Choose FortiClient SSL VPN for your Work from Home Employees

As a free VPN solution for your work from home employees, FortiClient VPN is highly recommended to help protect your work from home employees who need to access company resources from home.

This is because you get much more than just a standard VPN program.  It also helps protect your employee’s computers from viruses and malware which is more important now that they are working from home.  So, with FortiClient VPN you get a complete antivirus solution, as well as a VPN, for no cost, which is something that you can’t really argue with.

However, it’s recommended to purchase the additional paid only features, if only to get auto-connect and always up functionality.  This is to make sure that your employees computers have the VPN connected and running at all times, which maximises their security and minimizes the chances of threats.

Aware offer a suite of VPS Solutions for your business.  Contact us now to learn more.