Modern technology allows for greater flexibility. By offering homeworking to well-chosen staff or freelancers, you can increase productivity and improve retention rates, plus enjoy a raft of other benefits and cost-savings. There is however a potential downside to home-working - security.

Home PCs are notoriously insecure, many still connect to broadband with no firewall, have inadequate antivirus and may be on an insecure wireless network. Assuming that you wish to connect home-workers to the office network, how do you avoid the home PC affecting the corporate LAN?

The solution is a SonicWall hardware firewall at the corporate site coupled with a software VPN client or SSL Web-based VPN on the home PC, which encrypts the data and scans all traffic for threats. The firewall can even be set to block connection if the antivirus on the PC is not up to date.