Sharing files beyond the LAN
Afternoon all,
We are about to embark on a project to give as much access to our network to our teams in the field as we can.
We are going to be issuing iPads and smart phones to them all, try to take a few steps out of the information process, eg, person takes a picture of an insurance certificate and emails it straight to our DMS, rather than photocopying it, faxing it or posting it, and all the many steps the manual process takes now.
My question is, is there a secure way for them to access their home shares over the internet on a mobile device without VPN?
Currently they have a "U:" drive mapped to their desktops held on a 2008R2 file server, this would be what we would want them access to, and maybe each centres general drive too.
We are looking at the Private APN approach, but that becomes useless when on someone else's wifi instead of the 3G. And some mobile devices don't give you windows folder share access anyway.
We could install VPN clients on the mobile devices or use built in VPN, but that could be clunky and end up in many phone calls that end "have you gone to the settings, network, vpn menu and turned your vpn on, etc"
I seem to remember back in the mid 2000's having a "Windows Storage Server Appliance" made by HP, that could share a folder as a webpage, is that still an option with the right firewall bricks removed?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions,
James
