ShopperTrak is a provider of people counter technology and foot traffic analysis that improve retail profitability.
In addition, traveling employees like salespeople need an equally secure and reliable way to connect to their business's computer network from remote locations. One popular technology to accomplish these goals is a VPN (virtual private network). A VPN is a private network that uses a public network (usually the Internet) to connect remote sites or users together. The VPN uses virtual connections routed through the Internet from the business's private network to the remote site or employee. By using a VPN, businesses ensure security -- anyone intercepting the encrypted data can't read it. VPN was not the first technology to make remote connections. Several years ago, the most common way to connect computers between multiple offices was by using a leased line.
Those users can access the secure resources on that network as if they were directly plugged in to the network's servers. An example of a company that needs a remote-access VPN is a large firm with hundreds of salespeople in the field. Another name for this type of VPN is virtual private dial-up network (VPDN), acknowledging that in its earliest form, a remote-access VPN required dialing in to a server using an analog telephone system.