Remote access

The Internet allows computer users to connect to other computers and information stores easily, wherever they may be across the world. This process may be done with or without the use of security, authentication and encryption technologies, based upon the requirements and also encouraging the new ways of working from home, collaboration as well as information sharing in many industries.

An accountant sitting at home can review the books of a company based in another country, on a server situated in a third country that is remotely maintained by IT specialists in a fourth. These accounts could have been created by home-working book-keepers, in other remote locations, based on information e-mailed to them from offices all over the world. Some of these things were possible before the widespread use of the Internet, but the cost of private, leased lines would have made many of them infeasible in practice.