Outside access to limited data.

We were a subsidiary of another company whose business model for each
division was do everything on your own. We each had our own network and
systems to support our like business. The parent company was just basically
a holding company that we sent all our profits to and if they were good they
would never visit us.

We just got purchased by another company that tried to do the whole world
wide integration before they purchased us and it fell flat on it's face.
They basically sent all their employees from their divisions to our similar
divisions and said "Do it your way" to us.

We never shared network resources before because each division is so
different, but now these guys that came over to us are use to having this,
that, and the other thing from every office all around the world available
to them and we have some of those offices wanting access to some of our
files. We have about half a dozen directory structures that they want
access to however since I am a one man team I do not want to start giving
out access and vpn connections to offices in the EU, Japan, East Coast, and
West Coast.

What would be a simple and secure way for me to still be able to store my
files in my current directory structure (all over the place) and allow
people in remote offices to access the information and most importantly, for
me to not have to maintain a bunch of accounts for these users. Maybe a
single password per site or something?

"JN" <> wrote in message
news:#...
> We were a subsidiary of another company whose business model for each
> division was do everything on your own.

A bit of a non-plan if you ask me, but perhaps it worked for you at one
time...

> We each had our own network and systems to support our like business.
> The parent company was just basically a holding company that we sent all
> our profits to and if they were good they would never visit us.

Hey, I wouldn't bother you either if you sent me your profits...

> We just got purchased by another company that tried to do the whole world
> wide integration before they purchased us and it fell flat on it's face.

Not enough info here, but that could be either because they did not know
what they were doing, or you were just not ready to collaborate.

> They basically sent all their employees from their divisions to our
> similar divisions and said "Do it your way" to us.
>
> We never shared network resources before because each division is so
> different, but now these guys that came over to us are use to having this,
> that, and the other thing from every office all around the world available
> to them and we have some of those offices wanting access to some of our
> files.

Ah yes, this is where it gets interesting.

> We have about half a dozen directory structures that they want access
> to however since I am a one man team I do not want to start giving out
> access and vpn connections to offices in the EU, Japan, East Coast, and
> West Coast.

This is the actual business model: business decisions are left up to the
technical support guys. This almost never works.

> What would be a simple and secure way for me to still be able to store my
> files in my current directory structure (all over the place) and allow
> people in remote offices to access the information and most importantly,
> for me to not have to maintain a bunch of accounts for these users.

You have not given enough information about your common infrastructure to
allow a simple answer... One approach would be to develop trust
relationships between your individual networks.

> Maybe a single password per site or something?

No. As soon as you enable security based on people sharing a password, you
have lost all control over who accesses what.

/Al