Posts Tagged ‘remote access’
More secure alternative to VPN
Written by John P Mello Jr on October 23, 2009 – 4:23 pm -
Virtual Desktop Interfaces like GoToMyPC can be more secure than VPNs for remote workers.
As workers become increasingly mobile, they’re demanding access to their computers–both at home and in the office–from whereever they can connect to the Internet. Cube rats want to access their home computers. Road warriors need to connect to their office desktops to maintain their productivity while traveling. Linking to headquarters is essential for telecommuters.
Over the last decade or so, the vehicle for establishing secure connections outside a company’s firewalls has been the Virtual Private Network, or VPN. It allows a remote computer to tap into a corporate network by creating a secure tunnel to it through the Internet. This method, though, can have security risks. That’s opened a market for alternatives to the hoary VPN.
Because VPNs originate with a company’s IT department, their operation is unquestioned by their users. After all, the reason users are told they need to use the VPN is so they can connect to headquarters securely. That creates a false sense of safety among users so they’re likely to transfer sensitive data through the VPN without using additional encryption and deploy protocols that transmit authentication credentials without any protection at all.
