As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly set up a VPN for your remote workers.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   Someone with a licence or accountable authority has to sign this before it counts.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, power-user skill, and roughly 2 hours until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the documentation for the VPN platform, firewall or router you already use, and record the supported client devices, authentication methods and current software versions.
   2. Gather a non-secret network summary covering the office and cloud networks, remote-worker device types, identity provider, required applications, user groups and the systems each group should reach.
   3. Paste that summary and the vendor documentation links into the prompt, keeping passwords, private keys, tokens and public IP details that should not be shared out of the chat.
   4. Ask the model to produce the architecture, configuration plan, placeholder-based commands and a rollback plan, then save the result as a change document.
   5. Give the change document to a qualified network administrator to compare against the current firewall rules, identity settings, vendor documentation and required least-privilege access before applying anything.
   6. Apply the changes first to a test group, compare the connection and access results with the model's test plan, and fix or roll back any unexpected routing, authentication or access behaviour.
   7. After approval, add the remaining workers in stages, check connection logs and access for each group, and document account removal, lost-device handling and the final configuration.

   Prompt

   Act as a cautious network engineer helping me plan a VPN for remote workers. Do not ask for or reproduce passwords, private keys, access tokens or other secrets. Do not claim that anything has been deployed. First identify the missing information and list safe assumptions separately. Then recommend a suitable VPN architecture for this situation, explain the trade-offs, and produce a step-by-step implementation plan for [VPN platform or products already owned], [number and types of remote workers], [office and cloud networks], [devices and operating systems], [identity provider], [applications workers need], [required access restrictions], [existing firewall or router], and [target deployment date]. Include a test plan covering authentication, least-privilege access, DNS, routing, device loss, account removal, logging, failure recovery and access from each relevant device type. Provide configuration examples or infrastructure-as-code only with clearly marked placeholders, and explain every value that must be confirmed by a qualified network administrator. Flag anything that needs vendor documentation or professional security review. Do not recommend opening broad network access just to make the connection work.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.