Sooner or later odds are good that you will either want or need the ability to work remotely. Providing remote access must be undertaken very cautiously, because, as soon as you allow an employee to connect to the corporate network, you have to some degree, extended your network boundary to their workstation. This means your network s security is now only as good as the security of the remote user s system or network. In many cases this borders on no security at all. That is why remote access must only be granted after careful consideration and planning. While the different types of remote access pose different levels of security risk, there are some planning and configuration steps that are common to all of them.

The first task is to determine what type of remote access is appropriate. With a virtual tunnel network (VPN), it is as if the remote workstation is on the corporate network. This generally provides the greatest level of functionality, but also poses the greatest risk. If the remote system is compromised, an attacker is effectively inside your corporate network. While there are steps you can take to mitigate these risks, they may be time- and effort-intensive. To plan, configure, and properly secure a VPN solution is the most involved choice of the various remote access solutions you could provide.

Another option is to provide remote desktop functionality. This would allow a remote user to see and use the desktop of a system at...