devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Tag: remote desktop protocol

  • No Excuses: Lock Down RDP

    No Excuses: Lock Down RDP

    We’ve been at the “everyone working remote” thing for months now, and still there are horror stories of people being attacked via Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). Early on, it was understandable if not acceptable—but we’re not early on any more.

    During the rush of doing whatever it took to help people work from home, exposed RDP was just one of many stories we heard from systems operators, helpdesk and systems admins. Stories of people carrying desktops home, or thinking that tethering to their phone was a “good enough” internet solution predominated. But those issues are clearing up, and they’re specific to a company or a subset of employees. RDP seems to be more persistent.

    According to Shodan (article last updated end of March 2020), RDP use has spiked—and unprotected RDP use has spiked. Security by obscuring (exposing RDP on non-standard ports) has also gone up, and is not effective versus a determined attack. If your goal is to be secure, history has shown very well that obscurity does not at all work.

    Gil Rapaport wrote a great article about this over on our sister site, Security Boulevard. The only thing I would add is to put it on a Virtual  Private Network (VPN) or RD Gateway with 2FA, if you can. Some organizations still don’t have access to VPN services, but if you do, and RDP isn’t running through them, get to cracking.

    Some areas of the world are coming out of lockdown, but the amount of remote work will not drop to the levels it once was. Not soon, probably not ever. The only thing that was holding up remote work for a wide selection of office jobs was the belief that present was better. Some organizations, via forced remote, have learned that the work can indeed be done by people not warming a seat at HQ.

    So don’t put it off. Make certain you are protected. Sleep soundly at night, knowing that the easy vector for attackers right now is protected for your organization. And keep kicking remote rear. Systems are still running, even with the wild changes that came suddenly, and that’s all you–whether your organization recognizes you or not.

  • Teradici Brings Virtual Desktops to Azure Stack

    Teradici Brings Virtual Desktops to Azure Stack

    Teradici announced today it has made its Cloud Access Software (CAS) available on Microsoft Azure Stack, the version of the cloud operating system that Microsoft makes available for on-premises servers.

    Ziad Lammam, vice president of product management for Teradici, said the availability of CAS on Azure Stack makes it possible to employ the PC-over-IP (PCoIP) remote display protocol developed by Teradici to access virtual desktops running in the Microsoft Azure cloud from Azure Stack platforms.

    Virtual desktops have been around in one form or another for a couple of decades, but adoption has always been limited because of primarily the complexity associated with configuring virtual desktops on local servers. With the rise of public clouds, however, it has become easier to take advantage of virtual desktops that are made available as a cloud service.

    The PCoIP protocol created by Teradici transfers pixels between the cloud and the desktop, which makes it feasible to deliver even high-performance 3D graphics applications running on graphical processor units (GPUs) via the cloud. While there are other protocols that can be employed to access remote desktops, Lammam said PCoIP has gained traction because of its ability to support such high-definition applications.

    Microsoft, however, has thrown most of its weight behind its proprietary Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).

    It remains to be seen just how many virtual desktops might move to the cloud. Many organizations have resisted virtual desktops for a variety of technical concerns and cultural issues. Virtual desktops are difficult to set up on local servers, while connectivity to the cloud can be intermittent. At the same time, many internal IT teams responsible for managing local desktops have been reluctant to given up control of their fiefdom. In fact, it’s only been since the rise of Azure that Microsoft has been aggressively encouraging those IT teams to embrace virtual desktops.

    However, now that connectivity to the cloud has become more reliable and more organizations are lifting and shifting workloads to the cloud, both technical concerns and cultural issues are becoming much less of a hurdle, said Lammam.

    Less clear is to what degree IT organizations will embrace Azure Stack as a platform from which to access virtual desktops running in the Azure cloud. In general, Azure Stack requires organizations to acquire and deploy a modern server to run it. Many organizations are going to prefer to access virtual desktops running in the cloud without having to acquire a new local server running a new type of operating system. Teradici already provides access to virtual desktops running on public clouds without requiring organizations to have Azure Stack installed. However, there is a subset of Microsoft customers who will employ Azure Stack to build and deploy hybrid IT environments and will need to access virtual desktops running on a public cloud.

    Whatever the path chosen, it’s clear more virtual desktops will be accessed via the cloud. Many organizations want to reduce the cost of labor associated with managing local instances of desktops that are usually deployed across multiple remote office locations. The challenge now is figuring out the best path to achieving that goal based on the characteristics of the workloads being accessed.

    — Mike Vizard