Virtual Private Networking for Elon University is used for several purposes:
- Access from off campus to the Elon network.
- Access to the Colleague ERP network by faculty, staff, and our Colleague Maintenance Vendor.
- Access to Colleague for student worker positions from specific machines.
All connections use Cisco's Secure Client program available for Mac or PC.
To connect to the VPN
Double-click the client from the shortcut on your Desktop or in your Menu from Windows, or from a Mac it can be found in the Applications folder.
*Please note - if not installed please STOP here and consult the Knowledge Base Article for Installing the Cisco VPN Client.
Once opened, you will see two options in the menu as shown below.

For standard access to the Elon network, select vpn.elon.edu. For all access to Colleague whether on or off campus, select gold.elon.edu.
Connections to vpn.elon.edu will proceed without a secondary menu. A login window will appear as below followed by a Duo window for Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) confirmation.


Connections to gold.elon.edu will show a drop-down menu to select the proper group. Options are shown below. Please note - due to the login window, you may have to rearrange the window spacing in order to see the dropdown menu. Subsequent connections should remember your window positioning.

Faculty and Staff should choose Colleague for FacStaff, for student workers choose Colleague for Student Workers. The third option is for Ferrilli only. Once the appropriate selection is chosen, the connection will proceed as above.