When stores across the country are depending on direction from a central office based thousands miles away, clear and secure lines of communication become paramount.

To that end, Arby’s Restaurant Group, Inc. teamed up a remote-access provider to provide Arby’s employees with secure, easy-to-use internet and corporate network access from almost anywhere on the planet.

Redwood Shores, California–based iPass Inc. has relationships with more than 300 internet service providers around the world, which allows a traveling employee with minimal technical knowledge to easily connect to wireless hot spots, dial-up services, and other internet connections.

iPass’s CorporateAccess interface automatically detects possible connections then does most of the work to get the computer connected to the internet, including direct billing for access. As iPass’s Joan Fazio explains, an employee who enters a WI-FI equipped Starbucks with an iPass-enabled laptop could then click on the icon, type in a username and password, and be connected to the home office through a secure connection.

One of the major features iPass offers is the facilitation of a virtual private network (vpn) connection between the off-site employee and the corporate network. iPass software opens a “tunnel” between the end-user and the secure environment of the corporate network, so employees can access company email and other applications from almost anywhere.

Personal information is secure as iPass has no access to it. The system simply passes along the encrypted username and password to Arby’s corporate, for example. Moreover, iPass software ensures each user has updated anti-virus software installed and a personal firewall running before it allows its computer to connect. This protects the corporate network from becoming infected with viruses employees have unwittingly picked up on their laptops.

CorporateAccess also works on Macs and certain handheld devices.

A key to the usefulness of the CorporateAccess product is the fact that iPass works with all the primary companies in the internet service-provider industry. “We partner with all major players and integrate iPass connect with all the big boys you can think of,” Fazio says. These relationships started when iPass was founded n 1996, back when dial-up was the only real connection option. Their list of partners now includes 60,000 worldwide global wireless hot spots.

Since Arby’s started using iPass CorporateAccess early this year, they have been very pleased with the service, says Director of Infrastructure David Lipscomb.