A survey made by Aventail, the SSL VPN provider, announced today that the use of secure remote access usage will increase continually over the next 12 months. This will happen because mobile devices, wireless LANs, and  disaster recovery will be more and more used. Users feel that the productivity of these devices requires some measures of security, and it is exactly this security and increased usage that cause problems to IT organizations.

    In the case of teleworkers and home computer users, the secure remote access usage will also be increased by organizations. The survey also showed that among the issues important for users in choosing the secure remote access solutions were security, easy usage, installing and managing.

    The participants of the survey included managers or senior executives in IT, networking, and/or security departments, and came from organizations that were researching SSL VPNs. Some of the organizations participating in the study had over 1000 employees and were experienced in secure remote access solutions.

    The results of the survey regarding secure remote access usage mention that:

- 77% of organizations support secure remote access for teleworkers today
- Secure remote access usage will increase significantly over the next 12 months, when 85% of organizations will support secure remote access from mobile devices, 82% from a wireless LAN, and 75% for disaster recovery.

    The survey concluded that the secure remote access purchasing criteria are:

- 98% of respondents rated “security” as an extremely or very important criteria in making a decision to purchase a secure remote access solution, making it the #1 criterion.
- “Ease of use” and “easy to install and manage” were also top purchasing criteria, with 89% and 84% or respondents, respectively, rating them as extremely or very important.
- “Well-known brand” was deemed not to be an important criterion, with only 44% of respondents rating it as extremely or very important.

    When trying to find a good remote access solution, IT managers either go to experts or rely on their own research and sources. If they decide to go to experts, IT managers most often rely on their peers in other companies (81%), but also often turn to industry analysts (75%). In 83% of the cases, the main research source is IT magazines, while blogs are more rarely used, in 14% of the cases.

    Sarah Daniels, VP of Marketing for Aventail Corporation, stated: "This survey confirms the need for advanced secure remote access solutions based on today’s IT manager’s use cases. With today’s distributed workforce, now more than ever, network IT managers need to be assured that their employees have anytime, anywhere secure remote access--whether it be from a home office, on the road, a wireless LAN, or from a mobile device.”

For more information, you can download the Survey Executive Summary from http://www.aventail.com/SurveyResults

    Aventail is one of the best remote access companies. The first SSL VPN solution was delivered by them in 1997. Network managers are provided with a secure access gateway for all users, internal and external, to all network resources with complete security. Among the organizations that have chosen Aventail are AT&T, Chicago Housing Authority, DePaul University, DuPont, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), IBM Global Services, James Richardson International, Mississippi Department of Corrections, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Overlake Hospital, Radiology Ltd., and Sanyo.

For more information, you can visit www.aventail.com.