Getting adequate network coverage for field workers is a big issue for industries that serve widely dispersed populations such as the insurance industry, energy firms and news outlets like CNN. Consider a claims adjuster in a disaster zone who needs to process the claim but is unable to access the terrestrial network.
Inmarsat now has two L-band satellites providing coverage over 85 percent of the earth's surface and 98 percent of the population and will soon launch a third to deliver total coverage.
Inmarsat's Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) service can provide secure connectivity from nearly anywhere at transmission rates of 480K bit/sec. downlink and 384K bit/sec. uplink, and guaranteed steady 128K bit/sec. for streaming video. Through resellers this service can be found for about US$1 per minute, which is substantially less than the previous industry norm.
The days of suitcase satellite uplinks are long gone; today's devices are smaller and weigh less than a laptop. Some even come with Wi-Fi hotspots built in, making them convenient to share with colleagues in the field. Frank August, regional director, North America, at Inmarsat, said, "For industry and government professionals who must have a connection, BGAN from Inmarsat is the solution."
These remote, mobile workers also face the issue of VPN access back to the corporate systems. If a user is sharing a public Wi-Fi network he or she might not always have full signal, or the signal to an EVDO or EDGE network might be more reliable. Perhaps they need to send highly secure data over a private switched connection but have other data that could travel over the lower-cost public Wi-Fi.
When the connection is disrupted on a traditional VPN, the user is prompted to restart the VPN by re-authenticating. "With TotalRoam Connect," explains Anthony Celia, senior solution engineer at PadCom USA, "we've made it a seamless experience for the user while giving the IT manager total control."
A combination of client software and network gateway back at the corporate office manages connections so that the user logs in once on his or her mobile unit, and then as the user moves into areas with multiple services, the client will connect the mobile device into whichever is the highest priority path as predefined by the IT administrator.
Lastly, one of the biggest fears in IT is that mobile data will be compromised. Laptops are stolen all the time, smaller handheld mobiles are easy to misplace, forget or otherwise lose. How can an IT manager guarantee that the operator of the device is the authorized person, without creating such a hassle for the intended user that they give up or circumvent the cumbersome procedure?
For this problem, biometrics has been used for some time. However, the issue in using fingerprint authentication for mobile users has been that field conditions affected the accuracy of the readers. "Authentec solves this problem with TruePrint and True Match," said Art Stewart, vice president of business development at Authentec, "by scanning below the surface of the fingerprint in addition to the print itself." This means that wet, dirty or calloused fingers work just as well as a clean dry print. The system works so well that it has a 100 percent enrollment rate, Stewart said. The subsurface scanning method also renders useless traditional spoofing techniques such as picking up a print from a glass and making a latex finger cover.
Enterprise customers should note that Authentec's TruePrint scanner and software are now built in to every HP enterprise laptop, and other vendors are looking at incorporating the technology.
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