SMB Networks / (none) /

Who needs a VPN?

By Toni Kistner
Net.Worker, 06/04/01

Deserved or not, VPNs have a bad reputation. They're elaborate and expensive, tough to set up and a bear to manage. Sure, the technology is maturing, but plenty of companies - especially smaller ones with limited IT resources -flat out refuse to make the leap.

So when it comes to sharing sensitive documents such as business plans or customer data among dispersed workers, what do they do? Some don't share anything, prisoners of their own LANs. Others rationalize or minimalize the security risk and transfer files via e-mail or store and share them on free Web-based hard disk service such as Xdrive. Not that corporate e-mail applications lack security features - they don't. But again, their encryption features are tough to set up and a bear to manage. And Web-based storage services? They may encrypt data on their servers, but they're free, which really means they're under no obligation to you whatsoever.

But if your remote and mobile workers just need to share data - and not access network applications - Mangosoft offers an excellent VPN alternative. The Mangomind Drive is a multiuser Web-based file-sharing online service that's secure and inexpensive. Files are 128-bit encrypted at the client, in transit, and at the server - which in this case is an Exodus data center in Waltham, Mass. - so neither the storage service provider nor Mangosoft can get at your data. A five-user drive with 50M bytes of storage costs $14.95 per month. Better yet, you can get it for $7.95 per month until Aug. 17.

Mangosoft's patented peer-to-peer technology lets multiple authorized users access the same file simultaneously. It works just like a shared network drive; you set access permissions for files and folders; multiple users can access the same file, but only one user will have write-access while others will have read-only rights. You can save files to your local system, and the next time you connect to the Mangomind drive, the files will automatically synchronize with the latest version on the server. The system integrates with Windows, so users see the Mangomind as any drive in Explorer.

Companies such as Internet Publishing Group (IPG) are using Mangomind in clever ways. The 32-person content service provider for the commercial real estate, energy and construction industries has a main office in Newtown, Pa., a Houston office, a CFO in Denver and eight sales representatives. Employees can access the company's business plans, spreadsheets, customer projects and financial data on the Mangomind drive. And while the company's ACT! database sits on the Newtown server, the updates are stored on Mangomind, so each time a sales person accesses the drive, their contact information is updated automatically, according to IPG CTO Greg Baber.

"Our IT staff has better things to do than manage a VPN," Baber says. "They work on our customers' projects and internal projects to better serve customers. Every minute we spend fixing a PC or LAN problem takes away from our main focus."

The new version, Mangomind Enterprise ($14.95 per user, per month with 10M bytes storage for each user) offers internal drive administration capabilities and an unlimited number of seats.