Not many people would think about keeping their irons, blenders, toasters and slow cookers secure, but if you're Hamilton Beach/Proctor-Silex, you'd better do exactly that.

The manufacturer of small electric kitchen appliances, in need of a cost-effective way to give its sales force secure access to headquarters from the road, turned to RedCreek and the Internet, says Louis Gary, network manager at the Glen Allan, Va.-based company. Gary is replacing Hamilton Beach's modem banks and toll-free 800 service with a RedCreek Ravlin device and a 256K bit/sec dedicated Internet access connection from DigitalNation, an Alexandria, Va.-based ISP. The cutover should be complete by the end of this week.

Just by eliminating the 800-line charges, Hamilton Beach's virtual private network (VPN) is expected to pay for itself in 18 months, Gary says. In, addition, security will get a big boost with the implementation of 128-bit key encryption on all VPN traffic.

The sales team will be using the dial-up VPN to access Hamilton Beach's File Transfer Protocol server, internal Web site and the AS/400 system that stores all of the company's shipping information, Gary says.

The VPN will also deliver better performance because data calls will no longer be routed through the company's PBX, which slows down the connection.

Individual remote users are responsible for establishing a dial-up Internet access account with any ISP, Gary says. "I've urged them to go with the lowest priced service until they figure out how long they're online each month," he says.

In addition to the VPN connection, the ISP link will provide another benefit: giving the sales force Internet access so they can check out their competitors' Web sites, as well as their customers' sites.

- Denise Pappalardo