Say you want to work from home and access your practice management data stored in Universal Office. Or perhaps you want to work while on vacation or give your subcontractors and employees the option to access patient files on the go.
What options do you have?
As you may already know, the data you store in Universal Office physically resides on a computer you dedicated as the server. So, in order to access your practice management data, you have to go through your office network.
While there are several remote desktop and third-party applications you can use for remote access such as GoToMyPC and TeamViewer, we recommend you go with a Virtual Private Network or simply VPN. By definition, a VPN creates a secure link between your network and a remote computer over the Internet.
For optimal performance and reliability, you will want to configure your own VPN router. Setting up your VPN is a complicated task that requires advanced IT knowledge. To get it done right, you are better off hiring a professional.
The other option to configure your office VPN is to use VPN software such as Hamachi. There are also open-source options such as OpenVPN. However, the open-source options, in most cases, are harder to set up and maintain.
The VPN will not only allow you to access your Universal Office data but also your shared network files, enhancing your productivity no matter where you happen to be.
You can also use your VPN to unite several office locations into one corporate network.
Security
All the information sent between the office network and the remote computer is scrambled, so nobody should be able to intercept it. You can access all the resources on your company network, just as if you were in the office. Of course, you’ll only have access to the files you’ve been granted privileges for.
Setting up a secure VPN can be a complicated task that may require extra hardware and software. Because a VPN allows wide access to your company systems, you need to take adequate security precautions too.
Indeed, allowing any level of remote access increases the security risk for your business. Before you start, it’s important you evaluate potential threats and take steps to keep your data safe.
Get support
While we strongly recommend you configure your own, proprietary VPN using your own VPN-enabled router, we offer help setting up Hamachi for a nominal one-time fee. Or you can also use Hamachi Online Support to do it yourself.
