Project FRESH Home

You may have heard a lot of discussion lately regarding VPN and, more specifically, when VPN will be in effect. As many of you learned in Banner Navigation training, VPN is short for ‘virtual private network,’ and it is used to secure the communication between your desktop and a server on the network. In other words, VPN is your private pipeline to the Banner Finance and HR systems. When you log in through the VPN, you get a direct, secure line to the systems, and data that is passed through that line is encrypted.

VPN is critical to the security of the Banner Finance and HR systems and we are currently in the process of rolling out the VPN model, testing it and working out the details so that it will be in place before Finance goes live on January 2, 2002. The VPN rollout plan calls for a small group of Project FRESH users, a pilot group, to begin the initial testing. Once the functionality of this phase of VPN testing is completed, the rollout of VPN implementation will be expanded to more users over the next month.

What does this mean to you? This means that you need to have the VPN client installed on your computer within the next few weeks. If you already successfully downloaded and installed the VPN client, then you are all set and do not need to do anything else at this time. If you haven’t installed it, please follow the instructions outlined on the USNH Enterprise Systems Gateway web page at <http://www.usnhgateway.org/soft.html>. If you have difficulties with the installation, contact the UNH Help Desk. It is important to note that for the next couple of weeks you will still be able to access Banner without VPN.

This is a learning process for all of us. We understand that there are some desktop issues that need to be resolved before everyone is able to install the VPN client. Please communicate any problems that you experience and we will work with you to resolve them.

Thank you for your patience and cooperation.