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security issues with Net Meeting?

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by longennamer

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My company is going to have one user working remotely. We looked into VPN, and the costs of implementation and support seemed unreasonable for only having one user on VPN. Someone suggested trying NetMeeting, and having one workstation at our company's location set to allow the remote user to take over control of the desktop via the internet. The product will work perfect, but I am concerned about security issues. Can you give me suggestions as to how to make the workstation at our locationsecure so that no one else on the internet can take control of the workstation, and thus have access to all of our companies resources?

5 replies

by ebob

You cannot be 100% sure.

You could open up ports on your firewall FROM the remote user's Internet connection, TO the internal PC, and only when running the ports supported by NetMeeting.

2 Problems leap up right away to me:
1 - your remote user may not always be using the same IP address so it is almost impossible to configure the destination (FROM) address on your firewall
2 - NetMeeting would like MANY ports open, including a large number of "high value" ports which opens up your firewall, excessively

If you are interested in pursuing this remote control approach, perhaps you should look at software designed for it, such as "PC Anywhere" or AT&T's VNC (GNU shareware: www.uk.research.att.com/vnc), and open the ports for that application.

To get really robust, just subscribe your remote user to a service that will provide a fixed IP address.

BUT: consider how much NOT doing VPN can cost the company. Put the risk into $$$$$ terms, and compare that to doing a VPN. All you should need is the VPN capabilities activated on your firewall, and Windows2000 on your remote user's PC.

by malcolmny

We do ALOT of remote administration at our company through VNC. This software is free and we have not run into any security issues. Only one user can connect at a time, and it seems to be quite responsive. We have not used it for remote USERS, but I can not see how it would not work just as well. If you find this not to be true, let me know. I'm always looking to learn something new.

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