Remote Support / Connectivity
by
steve_te
·
about 17 years, 7 months ago
In reply to Steve_Te’s TechBlog
Remote Support / Connectivity
From a financial institutions provider perspective the above term can, with some clients, be a contradiction in terms! How? You say! If you have a software product / application at a client site, then isn’t it logical that you have to have some connectivity to that site? Well, simple logic says …of course! However, in the eyes of some security conscious (and that is legitimate enough) the methodologies currently in existance, simply put, leave “holes” in their infrastructure; whether to lesser or greater degrees.
We’ve grown from old-fashioned direct dial-up style support (you know, pcAnywhere to pcAnywhere, or Telnet to a UNIX server, etc.), then to RAS dial-up (typically viewed as only slightly more secure than a wide-open unauthenticated connection), then to VPN, which is a great way to connect if you’re utilizing broadband but requires a lot of maintenance and upkeep on both sides of the coin. Finally, we’ve settled on a 3rd party solution that is HTTP / HTTPS: dependant. It isn’t as cool as becoming a node on the target network and using thin-client environment tools such as RDP, but it does provide built-in “logging” that the customers really like and it’s very easy to train employees on as well. (just click “Connect” provide the proper passwords and access codes and you’re there). Doesn’t take a “techie” as my fellow employees like to say.
So, just curious, what are you doing in these scenarios? To what degree do your clients “own” their systems / networks and to what degree do they want you (the vendor) to own it, or have forced you to own it? And if you are “the client” in this scenario, what are your demands / needs to these ends?
