Appendix E - VPN autoconnect

With autoconnect enabled, when FortiClient launches, it automatically connects to a predefined VPN tunnel. As this happens automatically, you can only specify one tunnel to autoconnect to. You can leverage autoconnect to minimize security complexity when working from home. End users no longer need the extra step of providing credentials and connecting to VPN. FortiClient only attempts this connection once. If it fails due to the server being unreachable or incorrect credentials, FortiClient does not reattempt to connect until the next time the user logs in.

This guide details the settings required to add autoconnect functionality to an existing VPN connection, including the user definition and policies. If you are setting up a new VPN, see Remote access and SSL VPN full tunnel for remote user.

Autoconnect requires some stored credentials for authentication. These credentials can be:

• Username and password. See Configuring autoconnect with username and password authentication.
• Certificate (user, machine, or smartcard). See Configuring autoconnect with certificate authentication.

Once you have defined credentials, you must manually establish the tunnel the first time to store the provided credentials for future connections.